Aarto’s sneaky late changes

The latest draft of the contentious Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Amendment Act released for scrutiny and comment on Friday contains many amendments to the original and has been widely criticised.

‘At odds with constitution and 30-day deadline for submission insufficient.’

The draft regulations for the contentious Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) Amendment Act have been criticised as a repeal of the existing regulations, creating an entirely new set of regulations.

The regulations have also been slammed as at odds with the constitution and an “insufficient” 30day deadline for the public and legal minds to make submissions, comments, objections and suggested amendments to the 124page draft gazetted on Friday.

The public has until November 10 to make submissions to the draft regulations, which will see errant drivers losing their licences as early as next June.

Civil society traffic watchdog Justice Project SA (JPSA) has said the public consultation period was far too short to allow thorough scrutiny of the “extensive rewrite” of regulations.

“We believe the comment period should be extended substantially and call on the department of transport to do so,” said JPSA chairperson Howard Dembovsky.

He said the draft regulations provided a more complete picture, which should have been available during the previous public consultation phases.

“But [the draft regulations] go far beyond merely amending the existing regulations – they repeal all the existing regulations and create an entirely new set,” Dembovsky said.

He said the consultations held by the national and provincial legislatures, when the Aarto Amendment Bill was being discussed, centred only on the Act, but that the draft regulations ran into over a hundred pages with scores of new provisions.

The draft regulations for the Aarto Amendment Act, signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa in August, were unconstitutional, Dembovsky said, and were likely to result in further legal challenges.

He said although an Act was passed by parliament, regulations may be made by the minister without the scrutiny of the legislature

The foundations of the Act are already set to face a constitutional challenge brought by Dembovsky in April last year, with the matter set to be heard in the High Court in Pretoria early next year.

The public consultation phase for the Aarto Amendment Bill, as it was known back then, ended in early 2018.

The draft regulations, giving meaning to the Act, provided the public with another shot at making submissions, JPSA said.

“We urge everyone to download a copy of these draft regulations and to consider their contents very carefully before making written submissions,” Dembovsky added.

The constitutional attack on the Act is that it transformed the manner in which people will be prosecuted for road traffic infringements, removing the motorists’ right to trial before court.

According to the Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA), some added chapters in the draft regulations provide details on how the adjudication procedure on the infringements was designed to work.

“Furthermore, the draft document gives proposals on the appointment and rules governing the operations of the appeals tribunal,” RTIA spokesperson Monde Mkalipi said yesterday.

He appealed to the public to make proposals on the regulations of the Act in an effort to reduce fatalities on the country’s roads.

Mkalipi added they welcomed the continued debate generated by the promulgation of the Act and the release of the draft regulations, adding they were hopeful all role players would submit their inputs.