Govt waives penalties for licence discs
MBABANE – Motor vehicle owners who missed the deadline for payment of licence disc levies as a result of the system being down will not be liable for penalties.
Communications Officer in the Ministry of Finance Setsabile Dlamini, yesterday said government had elected to waive penalties that were due to the vehicle owners. She was responding to this publication’s questions regarding the recently restored network for the government services. The blackout in network lasted for the whole week, as government attributed this to weather and delays in procurement of maintenance parts.
Some vehicle owners had raised concerns over the possibility of paying the penalties. The news about the online services restoration was announced by the government Press Office through the State’s official social media pages on Tuesday evening. The system had been down since November 7 and the there was growing speculation that rungovernment cited the storms that were ning of civil servants’ salaries might be experienced over the previous weekend. affected. However, government allayed
By yesterday, members of the public those fears. Royal Science and Techwere able to access the different govnology Park (RSTP) Chief Executive ernment services, that had not been Officer (CEO) Vumile Dlamini, said the
services. functional for a week. Some went, to the Ministry of Information Communication Home Affairs service centres for civil and Technology and RSTP were working registration purposes, while motorists around the clock to restore the network. and others went to the Revenue Offices He said when government was affected to pay for varying by the storm, there was a power surge, During the downtime of the network, which caused the system to get into surge
The warning came amidst Facebook posts suggesting that a soldier based at Mbuluzi Barracks, Smandula Dlamini participated in the shooting of civilians in Mbabane.
The allegations about the soldier emerged from a Facebook post on Tuesday and left Dlamini shocked.
UEDF Public Affairs Officer 2nd Lieutenant Tengetile Khumalo, said Dlamini’s case was not isolated as the army had observed similar instances, where UEDF members had their pictures published to attract violence to them.
She warned that such acts could result in dire consequences, which are criminal charges on the perpetrators.
In the case of Dlamini, the Facebook user placed him in Mbabane on November 15, the day in which there was a confrontation between protestors calling for the release of two arrested Members of Parliament (MPs) and security forces.
Above his picture were the words “One of the soldiers lelidubula emaSwati now in Mbabane, called Simandula Dlamini Waka Dvokolwako…”
In the comments section, Facebook users poured scorn on Dlamini. threatening violence on him and his family.
Personal
Khumalo said such individuals were miscreant and taking advantage of the current situation by misusing social media platforms to perpetrate violence, because of personal differences.
“This has been observed in various occasions that have been ongoing. There is a tendency of spreading untrue identification of soldiers on the duration of a particular operation for reasons known to them,” Khumalo said. mode. “We have engaged IBM the vendor that owns the mainframe, and their engineers are working tirelessly to bring this equipment back into action,” said Dlamini.
Dlamini mentioned that though it was true that the government system for salaries ran on the same platform, it had not, however, been affected. Dlamini also refuted the allegations that the reason behind the blackout was because the systems had been hacked. “The government system has not been hacked,” he said. The CEO said the government was using modern technologies for security and government systems were in a highly secured environment.