THE Vehicle Inspectorate Department (VID) is finalising the decentralisation of its services to all post offices countrywide from where prospective drivers will now collect their licence discs upon completing driving competency tests.
Under the new arrangement, prospective drivers will be required to indicate a specific Zimpost post office from where they wish to collect their licence discs on successfully completing the driving test.
Zimpost will then alert the applicant of the availability of their disc through a text message.
This was confirmed by Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development Permanent Secretary Engineer Theodius Chinyanga.
“The ministry is still in the process and final stages of completing the decentralisation,” he said.
“On application, a client is supposed to indicate their preferred Zimpost agency to collect their licence from.
“Subsequently, when the licence is ready, Zimpost notifies the client through text messages.
“For biometrics and driver’s licence applications, applicants visit their nearest VID depots.”
He said the VID had partly cleared the backlog of 600 000 driver’s licences that had accumulated over the years.
“As for the professional driver’s licences, the ministry has managed to clear the backlog for 2019 and for the normal driver’s licences, we are through with January 2019 and have partly processed February to June 2019.
“The first preference is given to those who still have the certificate of competency, those who are currently going to the VID for the first time and those who have lost their metal licences.”
The Government recently introduced plastic driver’s licences to replace the metal licence discs.
The plastic driver’s licences, also known as plastic polymer licences, are already in use in several Southern African Development Community countries, including South Africa.
The new plastic licences are printed instantly and have security features that make them difficult to forge.
They are also machine-scannable to ascertain their authenticity.
Before the introduction of the new plastic discs, those who passed driving tests were issued temporary paper driver’s licences.
