When Fletcher Dayupay moved here from the Philippines last year, he knew how he wanted to make a living.
“I used to work trucking, delivering vegetables and when I came here, the first thing I was going to do is get my license” he said.
With a wife and kids to support, Dayupay was anxious to get started, but even though he already spent $12,000 to complete the required training, he hasn’t been able to take his driver’s licence examination because of a backlog across Alberta.
He’s been told he should expect to wait two months before he can get tested.
“It’s hard because we really need this job,” he said, citing the expense of raising a family .
”They have to do better make it easier for road tests”
The province says the problems started when the previous NDP government brought driver testing under provincial control.
It said there were too many concerns with private sector examinations and that testing needed to be government regulated.
However, that dramatically reduced the number of instructors qualified to conduct tests and led to waiting list that at one point, had 36,000 people on it.
“We know Albertans are frustrated with the wait times that it now takes to book and get a road test, “ said transportation minister Ric McIver, adding that “we know our registry partners and stakeholders like AMA and AARA are frustrated as well."
The UCP government says it will immediately hire more temporary examiners from the private sector to conduct driver tests .
However, the UCP isn’t ready to scrap the government-controlled driver examination system yet.
It says it will review what’s working and what isn’t within the current structure and decide if more changes are necessary.
