On February 11, Mr. Bui Hoa An - Deputy Director of the Department of Transport of Ho Chi Minh City, said that the total number of "suspended" driving licenses that need to be processed is up to 172,000.
Of these, 160,000 licenses are for students who passed the exam from early November 2024 to January 18, 2025 but have not been granted; 12,000 applications for renewal or re-issuance from January 13 to January 24, 2025; and about 800 applications registered online via the Public Service Portal.
This delay has caused many people who passed their driving test several months ago to still not receive their license, greatly affecting their work, daily life and activities.
Faced with that situation, the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Transport has directed to speed up the processing of documents to ensure the rights of the people.
According to Mr. Bui Hoa An, the shortage of blank diplomas has been temporarily resolved, however, the printing process still faces many difficulties due to limitations in machine capacity.
Units are having to work continuously from 6am to 10pm but can only print a maximum of 4,000 driver's license blanks per day.
Therefore, to ensure progress, Ho Chi Minh City prioritizes issuing car driving licenses first, and is expected to complete issuing car driving licenses for cases of license exchange by December 2024 in the next 15 days.
After that, the city will continue to print and return motorbike and car driving licenses for cases from January 2025 onwards.
The HCM City Department of Transport said that the delay in issuing and renewing driver's licenses has many causes.
The new Law on Traffic Safety and Order will take effect from January 1, 2025, with 15 driving license categories, compared to the previous 13 categories under the 2008 Road Traffic Law. This has caused many people to worry, leading to a sharp increase in the number of registrations for the exam. However, the transitional regulations are unclear, affecting the organization of the exam after January 1, 2025.
The management software upgraded by the Vietnam Road Administration since early 2025 still has many errors, affecting the licensing process.
By the end of October 2024, the Vietnam Road Administration had only provided 581,400 blanks to Ho Chi Minh City, reaching about 81.88% of the signed contract (710,000 blanks). To resolve this situation, Ho Chi Minh City has contacted other provinces and cities to temporarily borrow blanks, waiting for additional supply from the Road Administration.
Important raw materials such as ink and intermediate film are also scarce, directly affecting the speed of printing driver's licenses.
