DoT misplaces 200 driver's licences
Woman says she was told 'don't worry, we lost half of May and June'
Randi Beers
Northern News Services
Published Friday, November 7, 2014
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Instead of going to their rightful owners, a box of 200 driver's licences sat in a Department of Transportation vault room for almost a month this summer, Yellowknifer confirmed Monday.
One resident, who asked to not be named, says her licence was one of those the department misplaced, but she was never made aware of the situation. Although the department maintains the mistake was discovered in less than a month, she said that after waiting two months for her licence to arrive, she called the department and asked what was going on.
"I was getting freaked out," said the woman.
"They said, 'your licence was lost' and the only excuse they had was most of May and June's licences were also lost."
She shared her story with Yellowknifer on Monday after reading about 86 health cards that are still missing after the Department of Health and Social Services mailed them to wrong addresses in July. Steve Loutitt, director of road licensing and safety with the Department of Transportation (DoT), said the licences were never lost - they were just misplaced by a summer student.
"The process (of mailing out new licences) normally takes five days," he explained.
"But what happened was instead of going to the post office, the employee put the box of licences into a vault room for a total of 22 days rather than five, so there was a delay."
He said his department quickly realized the error when people started to call about the status of their driver's licences, although he admitted his staff did not reach out to the 200 people individually affected to explain the situation.
"We got them into the mail as soon as we could," he said.
"Most people wouldn't have given it a second thought that there would be a delay," he added, referring to the time it usually takes for licences to be mailed.
He added if anybody experiences a delay in getting their driver's license, they can call the department's driver and motor vehicle services number.
The woman alleges she called that exact number and was asked by the person on the other end of the line, 'how did you get this number?' and that dealing with this person was a "horrible experience."
She said the DoT representative went on to tell her there was no way to re-issue her licence and she would have to go back down to the Department of Transportation (DoT) office to fill out an application and have her picture taken again.
"I took time off work to take a picture again and guess what, they said, 'We won't charge you for it'," she said, explaining jokingly that she probably broke even based on the time she had to take off work to re-apply for a licence. Loutitt said he was not made aware of the experience this woman had with the DoT.
"She shouldn't have had an experience like that," he said.
"It was one of our summer students looking after (answering that line)."
He added DoT staffers tasked with processing new driver's licences have received training since the incident that happened over the summer.
