AfriForum welcomes the ruling yesterday in the Pretoria High Court that the appointment of Idemia as preferred bidder to print driver’s licence cards for South Africa was unlawful and invalid. The civil rights organisation is now calling on the Department of Transport to follow a transparent process to award a new tender and points out that now is the ideal opportunity to extend the validity period of driver’s licences to eight years.
Following a tender process for the supply of new licence card printers, the department’s bid evaluation committee last year named a foreign company, Idemia, as the preferred bidder. However, the awarding of this tender was put on hold after the Auditor-General pointed out irregularities regarding the evaluation process and regarding other Idemia contracts. The Minister of Transport, Barbara Creecy, consequently approached the court for a declaratory order. Yesterday’s ruling confirmed that the designation of Idemia was indeed unlawful.
Louis Boshoff, campaign officer at AfriForum, points out that the Department of Transport is not entirely free from liability for this unlawful process. “It is the Department of Transport that appointed that bid evaluation committee. Serious questions must now be asked about why the department would appoint a partisan committee and how to ensure that this does not happen again in the future,” explains Boshoff.
Boshoff adds that now is the ideal time to finalise the extension of the validity period of driver’s licences. Research commissioned by the Department of Transport recommended that the validity period be extended from five to eight years. The department has repeatedly confirmed that this decision has been approved and it has even been recorded in official planning documents of the department. However, the implementation of this decision still remains pending.
AfriForum is now asking why it is taking so long to implement. “This should be a simple step. Nothing needs to be changed to the cards or the renewal processes – the expiry date just needs to be moved forward by three years,” concludes Boshoff.
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