By Edwin Naidu

South Africans who have forgotten the nightmare experience of five years ago, when chaos greeted the conversion process of driver's licences to the credit-card format, resulting in long queues of frustrated motorists and considerable delays at licensing centres throughout the country, will have to do it all over again this year.

Tens of thousands of people will have to renew their licences again this year, but the problems that saw those long lines of people waiting for service at licensing centres throughout the country may not be repeated.

Ranthoko Rakgoale, the chief executive of the Road Traffic Management Centre, said licences could be renewed anywhere: "In 2003, it could only be renewed in the province one lived in. Now it can be renewed anywhere in the country."

The problems then were the result of a last-minute flood of renewals and an old computer system that could not handle the volume of applications.

The national traffic information system (eNaTIS), which was implemented last year - with teething problems that have been resolved - would also make renewals smoother this time around.

Rakgoale said that, in 2003, problems arose because people failed to heed the calls to renew their licences sooner rather than later. "Everyone left it for the last minute, resulting in delays," he said.

The credit-card format licence was introduced on March 1 1998, and motorists are no longer allowed to use licences issued in their identity documents. In terms of the law, driver's licences must be renewed every five years.

There are an estimated six million licensed drivers in the country. Between 1998 and 2007, the traffic authorities issued more than 13-million licences - this includes renewals, new applications and replacement licences.

This time around, renewal reminders will be sent early, asking people to apply within three months of their birthday. "There is no specific roll-out programme for people to renew. Instead, it will be a staggered process," said Rakgoale.

Motorists renewing their licences will pay between R100 and R180 - depending on the province - and must take along their ID book, a certified copy of the ID (for filing purposes), four ID photographs and the card issue fee.

It takes up to six weeks for the licence to be processed. "People should not wait for their licence to expire before renewing because the licensing process takes six weeks, and anyone applying once their licence has expired will not be allowed to drive," said Rakgoale.

Motorists without a licence face a fine of between R500 and R2 000.

Rakgoale said the centre was planning to ask the justice ministry to sanction proposals for a standardised list of penalties. For example, the penalty for driving without a valid licence, or for drunken driving, should be the same throughout the country, he said.

In future, he added, the traffic authorities - already on heavy zero-tolerance crackdowns on motorists - would be urged to deal harshly with drivers who break the law.

"We will not let a drunken person be behind the wheel, and the same should apply for an unlicensed driver."

Colin Msibi, the spokesperson for Jeff Radebe, the minister of transport, said the problems five years ago were in part also caused by the high number of people who resisted changing to the card system, maintaining that their licences in the green identity document should be valid. Already, he said, there were problems in the Western Cape where some people were without licences and had applied late.

"People seem to think that, if the licence has expired, they would have to redo the tests, but this is not true. The record of the licence is already on the system and will be reissued subject to the eye test and application for a temporary licence," he said.

The eNaTIS system was equipped to deal with the renewals process, he said, and provided that people kept within three months of their birthday for the renewal, there should be no queues this time.

Wayne Minnaar, the spokesperson for the Johannesburg metro police, said his department did not expect a repeat of the problems of 2003.

Last month alone, eNaTIS handled 10-million transactions, with 51 092 learner's licence authorisations and 135 479 driving licence card orders, 57 919 vehicle record introductions, 200 415 vehicle registrations and 790 336 vehicle licensing transactions.

More than 3,5-million transactions were performed on other computer systems that have interfaces with eNaTIS such as those of the South African Police Service, vehicle manufacturers, banks and insurance companies, while users of the eNaTIS application (at registering authorities, testing stations and provincial authorities) performed 6 million transactions.

Johannesburg traffic centres performed the most transactions (658 407) followed by Cape Town (559 576), Pretoria (400 341), Durban (264 140) and Port Elizabeth (159 019).

With 279 057 transactions, BMW SA was the most active non-governmental entity using the system-to-system interface with the eNatis, followed by Mercedes-Benz SA (47 443), Toyota SA (47 198), Volkswagen SA (38 744) and TransUnion HPI (28 296).