No need to rush to change driver's licenses to plastic cards

Recently, the press has continuously reported on the situation of people in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi lining up to exchange their driving licenses. Many people have waited for hours, even half a day, but still have not completed the procedures. This has caused overload at the driving license exchange points.

In Hai Duong, the Department of Transport's application reception area at the Provincial Public Administration Service Center has seen a spike in the number of people coming to apply for a change from paper to plastic driver's licenses. Previously, the Department of Transport received an average of 50-60 applications per day to apply for a change from paper to plastic driver's licenses, but in recent days, the number of people applying for this procedure has increased by 20-30%.

The reason why people with paper motorcycle driving licenses are rushing to change their driving licenses to plastic ones is because recently, the Ministry of Public Security has been leading the drafting of the Law on Road Traffic Safety to replace the 2008 Road Traffic Law. The draft law currently soliciting comments proposes to change all paper motorcycle driving licenses to PET ones in order to better implement the construction of a national database on population, including the integration of driving licenses.

Although the above content is only a proposal, the draft law has not been passed and has not yet come into effect, many people have "misunderstood" it, leading to local overload at the points receiving and renewing driver's licenses. Therefore, everyone needs to read the information carefully to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings.

Responding to this content, the representative of the Department of Vehicle and Driver Management, Vietnam Road Administration affirmed that there is no regulation requiring the conversion of driving licenses to PET cards, and that paper motorcycle driving licenses can still be used normally according to current regulations. With the old paper driving licenses, due to insufficient data, they have not been displayed on the VNeID application. People are not required to change their driving licenses, but if they want to synchronize on VNeID, they can go to change them. People who do not change their driving licenses still use normal paper driving licenses.

Regarding the draft Law on Road Traffic Safety and Order, regarding the issuance and exchange of motorbike driving licenses to plastic cards, public opinion is also very concerned. Some opinions say that the issuance and exchange of driving licenses from paper to plastic just to integrate more information into the VNeID system is wasteful and costly. Currently, the whole country has about 22 million paper driving licenses. With a fee of 135,000 VND/case, the cost of paying for more than 22 million driving licenses is not a small number. Not to mention that when implementing, state agencies must prepare equipment, machinery, printing to make PET cards, along with a team of human resources to do this. Meanwhile, people have to spend effort and time to do it again.

The question is: Why not directly integrate the available data from paper driver's licenses into VNeID instead of doing so?