South Africa’s only drivers licence card production machine is back in full operation, the Department of Transport has announced.

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

According to a statement issued by the department, 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 three weeks during the testing period to about 120 000 cards per week.  The machine has printed an average 2 850 000 cards per year in the past two financial years. Since its commissioning in 1998, it has printed over 60 million driving license cards.”

Spokesperson for the department, Collen Msibi, says 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.”

Msibi says the department is currently working on the process to introduce a new driving licence card as approved by Cabinet in August 2022.