Driving Licences

It was a pleasant surprise when we first arrived to find that getting a driving licence was no more difficult than giving someone from the office $70, and the next day, there it was: a nice laminated item, complete with a photo. But that, clearly, was too simple, so the government decided to tighten up.

The new system was introduced about two months ago, and with it a warning that the old driving licences would expire by the end of June. The new procedure was considerably different from the old one. It would involve a health check by a doctor (mainly blood pressure), an eye test, and three competence tests: a written test on the rules of the road, a second test on road signs and a driving test. If you got through all that you had to deposit money in the authority’s bank account, and show proof that you had done so. Finally your finger prints would be taken, together with your photo, and a couple of days later your licence would be issued. The cost $120.

As far as we know there is only one centre issuing licences in Kinshasa, with at least 100,000 drivers. As the deadline approached there would surely be massive queues, so a group of us at the office decided to go together before it became totally hectic.

The scene at the testing centre was very different from what we had imagined. We were ushered into an air-conditioned waiting room, and each was given a number. There was one person in front of us. Things were clearly not so bad. Then bureaucracy hit: we didn’t have the right identity papers. It was not enough to have a passport and the certificate of address issued by the commune. We had to have a Residence Card. So after waiting over an hour while they debated whether they could stretch the rules and accept us without a residence card we were sent away empty-handed. We later found that we would each have to pay $300 for the said card.

But we found out one important fact: the expiry date for the old licences is no longer the end of June. That will now be announced at a later date.

With the streets awash with fake driving licences, it makes sense to have one which is harder to forge, but this is clearly going to be an impossible system to implement in the short term at the scale required. But there can be no doubt that there will soon be an official announcement regarding the latest date for the validity of the old licences, and the police will start to crack down – to great financial benefit for themselves (the policemen) as they extract ever increasing bribes from the motorists. 

But there’s something else interesting about the set-up. The testing centres, that have been set up throughout the country, are operated by none other than the brother of the President, contracted by the Government. No wonder the fee is $120.