Licence card machine back in full production, while new dawn beckons for driving licence card

The National Department of Transport has updated members of the public that the driving licence card production machine is back in full production.

This follows the Department's statement in May 2023 informing members of the public that the machine was taken out of production for 3 weeks in order to replace a broken part identified during a routine maintenance.

The testing of the machine after the part replacement took another two weeks before it was certified to go back to full production. This will see an increase in production from the 60 000 cards produced over the past 3 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 2 financial years. Since its commissioning in 1998 it has printed over 60million Driving License cards.

The backlog is currently at 350 000 cards for the past five weeks. Backlogs are dependent on the number of orders received. There is currently a catch-up plan to address the backlog, which will be cleared by end of August 2023.

The Department is currently working on the process to introduce a new driving licence card as approved by Cabinet in August 2022. The new DL card will be launched before the end of the current financial year. It will also bring with it new card production machines to replace the current machine. This signals the new dawn in the DL card environment.

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Source: Government of South Africa