The country's only licence card printing machine has finally been fixed and fully operational. The machine had to be taken out of production last month in order to replace a broken part that was identified during routine maintenance. At the time, the Department of Transport said that the machine will be taken out of production for three weeks in order to replace a broken part identified.

The department spokesperson Collen Msibi said 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 of 2.8 million cards per annum in the past two financial years. Since its commissioning in 1998, it has printed over 60 million driving license cards."

Msibi explained that although there's been a backlog of 350 000 cards for the past five weeks, it will be cleared by the end of August this year. "Backlogs are dependent on the number of orders received. There is currently a catch-up plan to address the backlog. The Department is currently working on the process to introduce a new driving licence card as approved by Cabinet in August 2022," said Msibi. He said the new driving licence 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," he said. In January last year, the same machine broke down and the then Minister of Transport Fikile Mbalula said it could only be repaired in Germany.