Community members in Mahikeng have joined the DA in attacking the licencing departments, especially in the Ngaka Moridi Molema district.

The neglect they say is causing people to sleep outside the departments’ offices to queue for learners’ and drivers’ license appointments.

“It’s a risk waking up early rushing to join the queue of a limited number of people considered to make appointments. Traffic authorities should do something about this or increase the number of people they take for appointments,” said Kenny Leburu.

Mapule Thebejane said: “I realised I was risking my life when I woke up early sometime last year to queue for an appointment. Many people want their driver’s license but the department of traffic should register people who come on that day and take a limited number and those left behind should be considered as first priority the following days and not that people should wake up early everyday.”

The DA called for improvement saying people’s lives were at stake.

“Community members start queuing for service as early as 4am only to be served after four hours and this smacks of total disrespect and is rather unacceptable. All the different services in the department are handled by the same few people, causing the application forms to stop being issued as early as 10am. This affects local productivity as leave needs to be taken from work to fulfil their legal obligations,” said DA provincial media manager Tiaan Kotze.

“It is very unsafe to be in a queue at that time of the morning as it exposes members of the community to robberies and cold conditions. We appeal to the municipality to employ more trained permanent staff to alleviate the lack of adequate service delivery to the taxpayer. We respect our people and we would like them to be afforded a decent service,” said Kotze. Human settlements, public safety and liaison spokesperson Simon Mmope urged the community to use other license centres including Lehurutshe, Zeerust and Lichtenburg to avoid congestion.

“We appreciate people applying for licenses but they must be safe and take heed of criminals when they walk in the dark,” said Mmope.

Public safety director in the Mahikeng local municipality Keaobaka Boikanyo was not available for comment at the time of going to press.

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