The system here in South Africa requires you to book a date, time and location to apply for the renewal of your drivers license.
The only problem with this is that when you go online to do it, there are no slots available in your area. So now the government has decided that all people over 60 can just pitch up on a Wednesday without having to make a booking. This in theory should allow me to do my renewal and be happily on my way.
Sadly, reality does not work this way!
I arrived at the licensing offices a bit after 07h00, nearly an hour before opening time. The queues for both people under 60 and those over 60 stretched for hundreds of meters round the buildings. People that were obviously in the know had brought camp chairs and refreshments for themselves. After 2 hours of standing in the queue my feet have gone numb, and my back is going into spasms. And we have progressed less than 10 meters.
Chatting to the couple ahead of me it seems that this is the third time they are here. From what they tell me is the system seems to go offline often and at times they can’t reboot it. Then everybody is told to leave, and they just close the doors. Or if the staff decide that they have handled enough people and there are still too many outside, they just close the doors and inform those outside to come back on some other day.
This ridiculous state of affairs is due to the new system that was implemented some time back. No matter how much or how loud one complains about it, nothing is done to improve the system. I wonder if this is once again an upgrade called for by some politically connected person who acted as a conduit for some tender process with all the appropriate kickbacks that go with it?
paulsmusing2 