CHANGE your car licence number or pay up.

That's the warning from the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Transport as the deadline for the changeover moves closer.

KZN vehicle owners have until the end of 2025 to change their number pate or face a fine. Supplied.

It seems that despite the initial rush when the new car number plates came into effect in KwaZulu-Natal in 2023, hundreds of thousands of vehicle owners in the province have not yet migrated to the new system.

With nine months to go until the cut off date, Transport MEC Siboniso Duma told the Independent on Saturday that only 930 000 motor vehicle owners had switched over to the new KZN licence numbering system.

“A total of about 800 000 vehicles still need to migrate to the new numbering system.

Customers have until 30 November 2025 to migrate to the new system,” he said.

In the immediate weeks following the changeover at the end of 2023, at least 30 000 vehicle owners had registered within three weeks and the number was expected to grow.

Even shops that made number plates in Durban and Pietermaritzburg reported that they were overwhelmed by the number of requests that came in, and had to deal with long queues and overtime because of the excitement.

At the time the KZN Department of Transport said that their decision to switch over to the new system was made because they were running out of numbers for the old system. It would also bring KZN in line with regulations already in place in most parts of the country, except the Western Cape.

This week Duma said that the KZN regulations stipulated that from 1 December 2023, a customer could only renew their licence once on the old KZN numbers.

“With effect from 1 December 2024 the NaTIS system has been programmed to automatically change customers numbers, on request for a licensing of a motor vehicle. Should customers not renew the vehicle licences by 30 November 2025 and still have the old numbers, they will be fined by law enforcement.”

Until November obtaining a new licence number from traffic licensing departments was free and motorists would only have to pay for the renewal of their licence discs.

Under the new system cars registered in KZN have number plates that end with ZN, preceded by two letters, two numbers and another two letters.

Duma warned vehicle owners to change their number plates immediately when they received a new licence number as the licence number on the licence disc and the number plate must be the same.

Meanwhile, the KZN traffic department this week said that according to the National Road Traffic Act all licence discs are valid for a period of 12 months. However, in December customers that renewed their vehicle licences on the NaTIS online platform encountered a technical problem, and the licences were only renewed for 11 months. “The Road Traffic Management System, the custodian of NaTIS, were alerted to this by KZN province and all affected vehicles records on the system were identified and corrected,” it said.