Clear inefficiency

I THOUGHT having a DA-run municipality and provincial government would ensure that we received an efficient service. How wrong can one be.

Having not received a postal notification regarding renewal of my vehicle registration, with my current disc having expired, I thought I could quickly do it online.

So, I registered with e-services and then applied for the re-registration. Still plenty of time, I thought, to avoid penalties. Within the stipulated time of two days, I received notification that my application was successful and that I had to pay R543 online using a reference number which they supplied. This I duly did. My bank said it all went through okay.

So, I was more than a little surprised when two days later, my bank said that the transaction had now failed. On contacting my bank, I was told the reference number supplied by “vehicle registration e services” had not worked and the transaction was reversed.

When I wrote to the City and asked what had happened (to uces@capetown.gov.za). They replied within a day or two on October 13 and forwarded my letter of enquiry to vehicle.license@capetown.gov.za. I waited two weeks and sent a repeat of my letter – no reply. Time was now running out.

In desperation I tried once more, and my bank said it went through. Three days later, it said the transaction failed. Back to square one. On the next day, I phoned the vehicle registration office, and an attendant couldn’t help me as he said e-vehicle registration was another office. I asked for the number…

He said: “They don’t have a telephone, only e-mail, and that’s why they are called e-services.” Well, really?

The end result is that I gave up on the vaunted e-services, went to Fish Hoek and, at age 83, had to stand in a queue for an hour and a half on a hot summer’s day to do what I was trying all along to avoid – to obtain a new clearance disc. What’s more, I had to pay an extra R50 because now I was liable to a fine.

Can you believe the inefficiency of this? I foolishly thought computers speeded up our lives. Dr Ron Joseph