Hours after Transport Minister Jeff Radebe gave the upgraded transport information system the ”all clear” on Tuesday, vehicle testing and licensing stations in Johannesburg and Pretoria were still not up and running on Tuesday.
Tshwane metro spokesperson Alta Fourie said the system was going on and off. ”It [the system] starts and then goes off. So all our drive-through centres will be closed for the whole week to avoid traffic problems,” she said.
Technicians were attending to the problem, but she did not know when the system would be functional again.
In Johannesburg, metro police Chief Superintendent Wayne Minnaar said: ”No learner’s licences, no driver’s licences, no renewals.”
He called on the public to be patient. ”The stations are experiencing technical problems. We don’t know when the problem would be fixed, but the technicians are working on it,” he said.
Telephones at the Johannesburg, Randburg, Sandton and Roodepoort centres were either engaged or not answered.
The national Department of Transport, however, said the upgraded and computerised system was up and running. Spokesperson Ntau Letebele said it was ”back on online”.
”Where there are technical problems, our technicians are working on those,” he added.
Vehicle testing stations, vehicle registering authorities and driver’s-licence testing centres were closed last week for the upgrading of the old National Transport Information System (NaTIS) to the new eNaTIS system.
It is intended to prevent driving schools from making block bookings, which have often prevented individuals from making appointments. It also aims to reduce corruption by making it impossible for examiners to see the list of applicants, and vice versa.
The new service is electronic and means traffic-related transactions can be done through automated teller machines and the internet.
Radebe gave the system the ”all clear” at a launch in Midrand on Tuesday. ”There is no reason that members of the public cannot go to the dedicated sites,” he said. — Sapa