South Africa’s new driver’s licence card saga is mired in controversy, with government delays, suspicious tender practices, and rising costs. Allegations of tender manipulation and lack of transparency have fueled public outrage. The Department of Transport has called for an Auditor-General investigation as concerns mount over the R899 million contract awarded to French firm Idemia for the card machine.
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By Hanno Labuschagne
South Africa’s new driving licence card saga has been plagued with false promises by government officials, unacknowledged delays, suspicious tender practices, and alleged ballooning costs.
In the latest development, the Department of Transport (DoT), under Minister Barbara Creecy, announced that the Auditor-General would investigate the tender for producing the new card.
That comes after the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) met with the minister to raise concerns about the appointment of French firm Idemia Identity and Security, which will provide the new machine.
Over the past two years, the organisation repeatedly sought information from the Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA) regarding the machine procurement process.
The DLCA is the transport department’s division that is responsible for issuing licence cards.
While the DLCA and the transport department refused to reveal the details about the tendering process and cost of the contract, Outa obtained evidence that the latter had jumped from an original budget of R468 million to as much as R899 million.
The organisation has listed several other irregularities that it uncovered regarding the bidding processes.
“This included repeatedly issuing, withdrawing and reissuing the tender, along with three extensions of the price validity period, which is highly irregular and discouraged by Treasury’s procurement guidelines,” Outa said.
“Outa is concerned that the tender for the card machine has been deliberately manipulated to ensure that a specific bidder was awarded the contract.”
The Automobile Association of South Africa (AA) has also questioned why the card could not be produced by the state-owned Government Printing Works (GPW).
“The GPW has proven technical expertise to print cards such as these as it already prints the national smart ID cards used by millions of South Africans,” said the association.
“If the decision is to secure new equipment from an outside source, were all the factors of not using the GPW — and the costs of not printing ‘in-house’ – fully explored? If they were, what was the outcome of this exercise, and if they weren’t, why not?”
The AA also criticised the opaque procurement process for the new driving licence card printer.
Broken machine forces action — but years too late
The South African government first announced plans to introduce a new driving licence card after a severe backlog in renewals in 2020 and 2021.
While the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the issue, then transport minister Fikile Mbalula acknowledged the backlogs could also be attributed to high levels of corruption and technical shortcomings in the card issuing process.
The straw that ultimately broke the camel’s back was the country’s sole driving licence card printer breaking down in November 2021 due to an electrical fault.
The downtime persisted for two months, allowing the licence backlog to climb to well over 1 million cards.
This incident put the spotlight on what was then a 23-year-old card printing machine. The DLCA had already acknowledged years before the incident that the machine required replacing.
Frustration over the state of card printing affairs led to complaints from the general public and civil society.
At one point, Mbalula alleged that even President Cyril Ramaphosa complained he was struggling to renew his driving licence card.
A report commissioned by the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) in 2022 found the machine should have been replaced around 2009.
The Department of Transport recently also revealed the machine had broken down 159 times in its 26 years of use.
Aside from the machine being long overdue for decommissioning, the current driving licence card is also considered outdated by international standards.
Like South Africa’s decades-old green ID book, it is highly susceptible to fraud and a favourite of identity thieves.
Aside from little transparency on the procurement process for the new machine and cards, government’s announcements regarding the new licence cards have been confusing and contradictory, with multiple missed deadlines and backtracking on validity period extensions.
Below is the basic timeline of key events regarding the country’s shift towards a new driving licence card:
- 2020 and 2021 — Massive backlog in driving licence cards caused by corruption, technical issues at driving licence testing centres, and Covid-19 pandemic limiting people’s movement.
- November 2021 — Final design of new driving licence card revealed in first tender advertisement.
- November 2021 to January 2022 — Country’s only driving licence card machine breaks down after electric short and suffers longest confirmed outage in recent years, adding over 660,000 more cards to renewal backlog.
- January 2022 — Former transport minister Mbalula confirms plan to procure new driving licence card.
- February 2022 — Mbalula says the RTMC would commission research to determine what the new validity period for the cards should be, following pressure from civil rights groups, road safety experts, and opposition parties to increase the period between renewals.
- 30 August 2022 — Cabinet approves the proposal to procure a new driving licence card.
- September 2022 — Mbalula announces the new driving licence card will be piloted from November 2023 to March 2024, with last issued old cards expiring in March 2029.
- 25 October 2022 — Mbalula says a proposal to extend the card validity period to eight years would be tabled in Cabinet.
- 10 November 2022 — Second advertisement for tender for new driving licence card printer and card published. Withdrawn after failure to find suitable bidder.
- 5 April 2023 — Tender re-advertised for third time. 25 companies show interest but government focuses on five, which it only reveals more than a year later.
- November 2023 — Transport department stays quiet on launch of new driving licence card pilot, despite multiple requests for feedback from MyBroadband.
- January 2024 — Chikunga confirms printer had not yet been procured and says cards would be introduced by the end of April 2024, instead of March 2024.
- 10 April 2024 — Chikunga says department was at “tail-end” of new machine procurement, with a team visiting France to see it for themselves. This is concerning considering the bid had not been awarded by that point.
- 31 May 2024 — RTMC and Chikunga say that proposal to extend validity to eight years was never presented to Cabinet as research showed five years was best.
- 8 June 2024 — Department of Transport reveals five bidders being considered to provide new machine.
- 8 August 2024 — French firm Idemia appointed preferred bidder to print new cards.
- 14 August 2024 — Outa alleges that minister and RTMC misled public about validity period issue, with the now-disclosed research report recommending an eight year validity period. The government had effectively gone against the report’s recommendation, without providing a valid reason for
- September 2024 — Minister Barbara Creecy confirms Auditor-General will investigate the tender award for new licence cards after she met with Outa and it raised its concerns over irregularities.
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This article was first published by MyBroadband and is republished with permission
Source: https://www.biznews.com/sarenewal/2024/09/13/sas-drivers-licence-saga
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