Pretoria - The roads and Transport Department in the metro will from today extend operating hours at its licensing centres until the end of the month to mark the annual October Transport Month.
The centres will open for business from 8am to 6pm weekdays and 8am to 1pm on Saturdays. The centres include Akasia driving licence centre and Akasia motor vehicle registration, as well as Centurion Licensing Services.
According to the department, the arrangement is meant to ensure that customers are catered for and also to clear the backlog brought on by the hard lockdown.
Last week, licensing departments were packed to the rafters as motorists rushed to renew their vehicle licences before the last day of the grace period, which was yesterday.
Those who failed to renew vehicle licences would incur additional costs for late renewals, the Road Traffic Management Corporation had said.
Its spokesperson Simon Zwane said motorists who were late on payments would incur penalties calculated at 10% of the annual licence fees per month.
Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula gazetted an extension in July for the validity period of all motor vehicle discs, permits and roadworthy certificates that expired from March 26 to May 31.
This was extended until August 31.
Beyond this period, motorists were entitled to 21 days to renew vehicle discs without incurring late payment costs.
The extension affected 2465439 motorists whose discs expired during the lockdown period.
A total of 1701724 (69%) had taken advantage of the extension and renewed their licences by the end of last week.
Zwane said they were satisfied with the public’s response to the extension and called on those who had not yet renewed to take urgent steps to comply and save money.
Pretoria News