• The Department of Transport says the repair of the country’s only machine capable of printing driving licence cards is complete.
• Following the repairs and testing, the Department says the machine can now print up to 120 000 per week.
• The department said that it is hopeful new cards can replace the existing cards, as well as the single printer used to produce them.

Despite saying in May that the maintenance of South Africa’s only machine capable of printing drivers license cards wouldn’t affect the production of those cards, there is now a backlog of 350 000 cards which need to be produced.

This according to the Department of Transport which on Sunday announced that the printer was back in operation after it went offline for maintenance in April. During that maintenance, it was discovered that a part in the machine was broken and that part needed to be order.

While the machine has been down, a backlog of 350 000 licenses has amassed. That may not be a huge problem as following the maintenance and repair, the machine will be able to operate at a better rate.

“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,” the Department of Transport said.

Per that statement, in little over two weeks, the backlog should be cleared.

If like us, you shake your head at the idea that there is a single machine that is capable of printing driver license cards in SA, there is good news on the horizon.

The Department of Transport is in the midst of launching new driver licence cards before the end of the the current financial year.

“It [the launch of new licence cards] will also bring with it new card production machines to replace the current machine,” said the department.

The use of the plural “machines” is encouraging there, but we are holding out to see whether that simply means two machines rather than one. For now though, the current machine has been repaired and if you’ve been waiting for your licence to be renewed, hopefully the repair holds and there aren’t anymore delays.