The Department of Transport has announced that the driving licence card production machine is back in full production.
This follows the department’s announcement to the public in May 2023 that the machine was taken out of production for three weeks in order to replace a broken section identified during a routine maintenance.
Department spokesperson, Collen Msibi, said the testing of the machine, after the fragment replacement, took another two weeks before it was certified to depart back to full production.
“This will see an increase in production from 60 000 cards produced over the past three weeks during the testing period to about 120 000 cards per week.
“The machine has printed an average 2 850 000 cards per annum in the past two financial years. Since its commissioning in 1998, it has printed over 60 million driving licence cards,” Msibi said.
The backlog is currently at 350 000 cards for the past five weeks, depending on the number of orders received.
He said the department has introduced a catch-up region to address the backlog, which will be cleared by the conclude of August 2023.
“The department is currently working on the process to introduce a current driving licence card as approved by Cabinet in August 2022. The current driving licence card will be launched before the cease of the current financial year.
“It will also bring with it novel card production machines to replace the current machine. This signals the modern dawn in the driving licence card environment,” Msibi said. – SAnews.gov.za
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