Renewing car licences

If your are a car owner you must have sometimes gone through the ordeal of paying the road tax at the ADT Licensing and Testing Department.

I do not blame licence holders for not renewing their car licences in time, as day after day one finds endless queues, rain or shine. I can never understand why after queuing for hours one has to queue again at another window where it is referred to as the "old system"!

No matter how much has been said in the media nothing has been changed. Does the minister responsible know about this?

We are living in the year 2005 so why not update the whole system and copy what other EU member states are doing? No doubt they have a much better system.

Had it not been for many insurance companies which offer to renew their clients' licences without charging them a fee, there would be a very high number of unlicensed cars on the road.

Previously, one could send the renewal fee by post or deposit it at the counter and receive it back in due course. However very few risk taking this option nowadays.

On January 19 an insurance company deposited a good number of licences for renewal, but to the dismay of those concerned, these were returned four days after the end of the month, putting these clients at risk of being fined.

This year one could also start renewing one's licence by e-mail, but more often than not the system is out of order. The idea of paying the road tax through the insurance companies is still in the pipeline. How about paying the licence fee at the local council offices, thus avoiding long queues?

I do not blame the ADT employees for working by the book as they have a lot of pressure not only from the public but also from their principals and they hardly have time for a break.

I am sure the authorities can adopt a better, smoother system than the present primitive one.