More than half of South African driver’s licences are fraudulent or invalid, the Department of Transport said on Monday.
Wendy Watson, a senior official of the department, cited procedural irregularities as the root of the problem.
Much more still has to be done to weed out corrupt officials.
She said in a statement that large numbers of forged and fraudulent foreign licences are flooding into the country and then being converted into valid South African licences.
”Once we realised what was happening, we demanded that a letter from the foreign licensing authority be issued to certify the validity of each foreign licence.
”It is now becoming clear that these letters are also being forged — quite possibly by the same people who are forging the licences,” Watson said.
Ina van der Merwe, chief executive of the credentials verification company Kroll MIE, said almost 18% of all driver’s licences submitted for verification to her company turn out to be forged or fraudulent.
”There has been a substantial year-on-year growth for the past five years, indicating that the problem is spiralling out of control.”
Van der Merwe said that horror truck and bus accidents over the past six months have ”more than often” involved unlicensed people at the wheel, or drivers whose licences had been issued improperly.
Watson said the department has ”serious doubts about the driving abilities of a large percentage of South African drivers”.
”To that end, the special investigations unit … has been making good progress in rooting out the rotten apples in licensing departments throughout the country.”
About 75 dedicated investigators are working around the clock to plug the loopholes being exploited by fraudsters.
”We are very impressed by the work done by the unit so far and we feel certain that their investigators will get to the root of the problem and see to it that the guilty parties are prosecuted,” Watson said. — Sapa