Traffic office’s services resume at slow pace
Braelyn centre sees queues of people waiting for hours
Although construction work continues at the traffic department in Braelyn, full services resumed at the offices on Monday.
However, on Thursday, licence and learner’s licence applicants were made to queue for hours as there was only one cashier on duty for a large part of the morning. The Braelyn offices were set alight during the Samwu strike in December.
Parts of the licence section were hardest hit.
On Thursday, the Dispatch arrived at the Braelyn department at 7.40am, and stood in the queue with others.
The offices opened shortly after 8am, as scheduled.
Those needing eye tests were effectively directed to the eyetesting centre, but it was already clear that those needing to pay at the cashiers would have a long wait, with the queue streaming out the door.
The eye testing process took about 90 minutes per applicant, but was carried out in an orderly fashion.
However, when applicants returned to the cashier’s queue, frustrations began to bubble.
The queue hardly moved for the best part of an hour, and applicants said only one of the three cashiers was on duty.
An elderly woman, who was holding her friend’s place in the queue as she could no longer stand, told the Dispatch that it was the only time her friend had to renew her licence in the next two weeks.
Eventually the women up and went home.
Applicants finally moved into the offices, where it was confirmed only one cashier was on duty at the time.
The process only sped up when a second cashier became available after 11.30am.
BCM spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya was travelling on Thursday and was unable to provide comment on the traffic department situation at the time of writing.
The eye testing process took about 90 minutes per applicant
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