JPJ has extended the deadline to renew one’s driving license (CDL) and road tax until the end of 2021 and will return to walk-ins soon.
Last week, we experienced firsthand just how frustrating and problematic the process of renewing one’s driving license had become in Malaysia. Today, Minister of Transport Wee Ka Siong announced a few changes that we are happy to report.
Deadline To Renew Road Tax and Driving License Pushed Back
First of all, the deadline for renewing one’s driving license and road tax has been pushed back to 31st December 2021 from the current deadline of 30 September 2021. This is welcome news, as people will have more time to get this done at the cost of the government.
It also alleviates some burden on the rakyat. Even though RM30/year for a license isn’t really much, road tax can become quite exorbitant for capacities above 2.5L. With the economy in shambles, this small relief will help some Malaysians figure things out without getting hit with huge samans come October 2021 when more of the travel restrictions are (hopefully) eased.
JPJ To Allow Walk-Ins From 6 September 2021
The terribly implemented appointment system from JPJ will be scrapped soon. Instead, fully-vaccinated, low-risk members of the Malaysian public will be able to walk into any JPJ office starting 6 September 2021. Hopefully, this also means that driving licenses and road tax stickers will be renewable at Pos Malaysia offices, which are allowed to conduct JPJ transactions.
Remember, you need to show your MySejahtera app status to prove that you’re a low-risk individual with both doses of the vaccine before you can ‘walk-in’.
Will They Also Solve The Stock Issue
Despite the overall positivity of this news, it has to be said that one last issue was overlooked – the availability of driving license blanks. When we went to the Pos Malaysia office last week, the kakak told us that even if we had a JPJ appointment, she could not issue a driving license because they had no stock of the Driving License blanks.
Will They Also Solve The Workload Issue?
A lot of these renewals are actually relatively straightforward. You don’t need a human operator in between to verify things. However, because the system is not setup for that much automation, a task that would otherwise require 3 minutes takes 10 minutes and the result is the average wait time for each person expands to half an hour as the line gets longer and longer.
With so many Malaysians waiting to renew their license and road tax, we have no doubt that when the 6th of September comes, there’s going to be a LOONNG line in front every Pos Malaysia, UTC and JPJ office. Even longer than usual.
We hope they have hired some experts to help make more efficient use of the tools we already have on hand. Think about the MyKad for instance. It already has so much biometric information. Couldn’t a driving license renewal be done through an automated kiosk using one’s MYKAD and fingerprint?
