FORGED DRIVING LICENCES

Mr Teo Chong Tee asked the Minister for Home Affairs whether the Traffic Department has received reports of forged Singapore driving licences and whether a new type of driving licence will be introduced to replace the present handwritten one in the foreseeable future.

The Minister for Home Affairs (Prof. S. Jayakumar): Mr Speaker, Sir, the Traffic Police detected a total of 323 cases of forged driving licences over the last five years. However, with the introduction of a new procedure to verify the driving licence of a person who is unable to provide his driving licence on the spot, the number of forgeries has significantly declined to only 25 in 1987. The Traffic Police therefore consider this not to be a serious problem as there are some 750,000 qualified driving licences issued in Singapore.

I would also like to inform the Member that the feasibility of introducing a new tamper-proof driving licence is also being looked into now.