The government has finally revealed the cost of the new driver’s licence card printers that it plans to obtain, and they aren’t cheap.
The Department of Transport (DoT) recently announced that it wants to procure three new machines at a cost of R334 million per unit, bringing the total cost up to a staggering R1 billion.
Ballooning costs
During a recent parliamentary Q&A, the new Minister of Transport, Barbara Creecy, stated that South Africa’s licence card printer has reached the end of its lifespan and that the DoT will procure three new machines to replace it.
All of the licences produced in the country currently come from a single machine, which has been in service for over 26 years and is well past its prime.
The printer’s advanced age and outdated design have made it prone to several breakdowns and malfunctions, with at least 159 cases recorded during its lifetime, according to BusinessTech.
Even when the printer is functioning, it takes an average of 14 days for the DoT to issue a single card, making it difficult to keep up with the constant demand created by South Africa’s relatively short licence card validity periods.
The slow turnaround time, combined with the printer’s unreliability, has resulted in numerous backlogs for people trying to renew their driving licences, reaching a peak of 1.3 million between 2022 and 2023.
The machine’s poor performance also has a significant financial cost, as the state has spent millions on its repair and maintenance.
RISE Mzansi revealed in parliament that, between 2019/2020 and 2034/24, over R21 million was spent on the DoT’s licence printing equipment with an additional R870,000 allocated for the current financial year.
Ex-transport minister Fikile Mbalula with the current licence card printing machine. Source: MyBroadband
To solve these issues, the DoT issued a tender for a new printer that can print at a rate of multiple cards per day.
Another requirement was to have a modern device that could issue licences with new security features, bringing South Africa’s system up to date with international standards.
The acquisition was approved by Cabinet on 30 August 2022, and the first cards were initially scheduled to be in circulation by the end of April 2024.
However, the licences have still not appeared, and the DoT has since come under fire from civil action groups regarding the tender it put out for the country’s licence card production.
Groups like the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) have called on the DoT to cancel and re-issue the contract following the announcement that a candidate – Idemia – had finally been selected for the role.
According to Outa, the tender process was highly irregular and appears to have been manipulated to ensure that a particular company won the bidding.
“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,” said Outa.
“The Driving Licence Card Account (DLCA) ran the tender on three occasions between 2021 and 2023, withdrawing it and re-issuing it, without providing the details and reasons for cancellation of each tender in a transparent manner.”
At least 25 companies attended the initial DLCA tender briefing, but only five submitted bids by the time the last application was opened, suggesting that the process was opened and cancelled to narrow the pool of candidates.
In addition to these accusations, the DoT has also been criticized for the ballooning cost of the licence card printers, as the department’s budget was initially indicated to be R468 million.
Now, the DoT claims that it will need R1 billion to procure three machines for South Africa, more than double what it previously reported.
In response to these allegations, Creecy announced that the Auditor-General has been instructed to expedite and widen the scope of its audit into the licence card tender award, which is expected to delay the arrival of South Africa’s new licences even further.
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