It’s been 15 years, so please collect your car

The parking lot at the OR Tambo International Airport is forever bustling with people coming and going, scrambling to catch flights to far-off lands or returning home.

But for 15 years a forlorn and forgotten car has not moved.

It is one of 70 vehicles that have been abandoned at the airport, relegated to gather dust in its long-stay parking facility.

The Airports Company of SA is calling on the owners of these cars to claim them, if they can bear the mammoth parking fees to release them.

To liberate the car, the owners will need to arrive at the airport with their dog-eared parking ticket and R85,000 to pay the tab, based on a fee of R45 a day.

“We have attempted on numerous occasions to contact the owners of these vehicles, to no avail,” OR Tambo Acsa spokesperson Samukelo Khambule said.

Together the abandoned vehicles have racked up about R1m in unpaid parking fees, hence the appeal for people to collect their cars.

Khambule said airport administrators had their hands tied when it came to moving or disposing of long-forgotten cars.

“The airport is not able to dispose of or sell the vehicles as it does not have ownership rights or hold documentation on the vehicles,” she said.

“Airport management is considering legal options, which could involve approaching the relevant court for an order that entitles it to dispose of the vehicles.”

All costs associated with the parking and storage of these vehicles, she said, must be settled before the cars can be removed.

“Acsa will require a valid eNatis document, an affidavit from the SAPS, and a copy of a relevant driver’s licence to prove ownership,” she said.

The call follows a report in the Sunday Times that a senior civil servant with the department of arts & culture had amassed as much as R73,000 in parking fees for a car left at Sandton’s Gautrain station.

A grime-covered Audi A4 — registered to department chief director Charles Mabaso — has stood in the station’s underground parking for two years.

The paper’s attempts to contact Mabaso via text, WhatsApp, phone and e-mail were fruitless.

Gautrain spokesperson Kesagee Nayager said according to records the Audi had been parked there for two years.

If a car owner parks but does not use the train service, he or she has to pay a parking fee of R100 a day.

If the driver does use the train the fee is R23 a day, or nearly R17,000 for two years.