Q&A with Gauteng transport MEC Jacob Mamabolo

Why is it so difficult to book a slot for licence renewal online?

If there's no capacity at the DLTCs [driving licence testing centres] in terms of people, machinery and equipment then it will not help to issue many slots.

Lack of capacity is nothing new. Why hasn't it been dealt with?

Because over the years we failed to deal with the problem of fragmentation of the service across municipalities, provincial government and national government.

Who runs the DLTCs?

Mostly the municipalities.

Why are they messing up and what are you doing about it?

There are critical variables they're not in control of. The machines they need for eye tests, fingerprints and scanning of the driver's licence are run and controlled by national government. They're every day broken and cannot be serviced because the technology is obsolete.

Why are motorists being fined for not renewing their licences if obsolete machines are to blame?

Policy with respect to that is the competency of national government.

Can't you at least double the validity period for licences so motorists don't have to go through this every five years?

National government and the minister have to make those policy determinations. For me the most important issue is for the process to be efficient so that it is easy and convenient for people.

From what you say this is not going to happen any time soon.

I concede that. But we in Gauteng are working on a new generation of DLTCs that will use better technologies.

But the machines are run by the national government?

In this province we don't need them because they're making it difficult for us to service the huge population we have. They're a big problem for us.

The minister said last year that the problem is corruption among back-office staff.

When I asked the Road Traffic Management Corp why the process is not working optimally they said it is corruption. Members of the public told me about corruption. Driving schools told me about officials that have set up bogus driving schools that are manipulating the entire system. So to that extent I agree.

So how many officials have you identified and removed?

In February I announced that we are going to appoint a forensic investigation company. In July we completed the supply chain process and appointed a forensic investigation company. We've given them six months to crack the syndicates on corruption in the DLTCs.

If it took six months just to appoint them what makes you think they're going to crack this in six months?

I've issued a directive to this company. I'm not going to wait for six months for them to start showing me results. I need culprits to be identified here and now.

What then? Are you going to ensure law enforcement prosecutes them?

What is worrying is I'm hearing there are people facing allegations of corruption in municipalities and nothing happens to them. So we will ask law enforcement to help us, definitely yes.