When earlier this week Public Works Minister Freddy Perez became the first citizen to renew his driver’s license in just 25 minutes, the press announced the timesaving as one of the main reasons behind the government’s major investment in hiring the DeKolor company, without holding a tender. But, as El Caribe reports in its Friday issue, when ordinary citizen Alcides Vallejo went to apply, it took him five hours to get through the process, much the same as before. Luis Martinez complained to the newspaper that he had arrived at 8:30 am and was still there at 12 noon trying to complete the procedure. The new procedure represents a price increase of over 140% for the service. DeKolor director Nicanor Pena attributed the delays to a surprisingly large number of people showing up for renewals or their first driver license.
The newspaper reports that on the positive side the new system obliges the driver to personally carry out each of the steps in the procedure, thus ridding the system from the so-called “buscones” that sought to expedite the process.