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 to replace a broken part
identified during 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 of 2 850 000 cards per annum in the past 2
financial years. Since its commissioning in 1998, it has printed over 60 million 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 the 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.