In his written response to a question posed on the Parliamentary Monitoring Group (PMG), Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula says his department requested in early November 2020 that each of the entities in the nine provinces submit details of their backlogs, causes of delays, and indications as to when the backlogs will be dealt with.

Both Gauteng and North West are yet to respond to Mbalula’s request.

From statistics provided by the remaining provinces, presently there are 7920 applications for taxi operating licences yet to be greenlit or fully processed.

According to Mbalula the backlogs are in KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape, Limpopo and Free State.

The Eastern Cape, Western Cape and Mpumalanga indicate there are no backlogs in those provinces.

The reasons for the existing delays are identified as the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the processing of applications as well as the current pace of the National Land Transport Information System (NLTIS) which has also been described as unreliable.

The department anticipates that by end of March 2022, the backlog will be cleared.

Interestingly, the Northern Cape has the second highest number of unprocessed applications at 2698. KwaZulu-Natal has the highest at 2859 applications.

OFM News