Government, Justice Project on collision course
A NEW fight is brewing between Justice Project South Africa and the national Transport Department over proposed amendments to the National Road Traffic Regulations to cater for the withholding of vehicle licence renewal discs because of outstanding e-toll bills.
Howard Dembovsky of Justice Project South Africa said yesterday that the publication of these proposed amendments for public comment on July 17 referred to “regulation 11 of the e-Road Regulations, 2015”, which they had been unable to find anywhere, even on the government website.
Dembovsky said “regulation 11 of the e-Road Regulations, 2015” had either been “sneakily pushed through” or did not exist, in which case the proposed amendments published for comment on July 17 could not make reference to them.
He said if any amendment to the e-Road regulations was proposed, it should have been published for public comment and at least 30 days allowed for comments to be submitted.
The proclamation of the e-Road regulations should have followed this public and stakeholder engagement process, Dembovsky said. He said although there was a possibility Justice Project South Africa had missed the advertising and proclamation of these amendments, it was impossible that everybody had missed them.
Dembovsky said he wrote to the department at 9am yesterday to put the department on 24-hour notice to provide them with the two government gazette notices published about the e-Road regulations.
“If the department fails to do so or to respond, I will be seeking an urgent high court order to compel them,” he said.
The department failed to respond to a Business Report request for comment.
Justice Project South Africa said in an article published on its web page that it had previously stated it would vigorously oppose any amendments to legislation proposing that the SA National Roads Agency Limited should be granted the power to hold motorists hostage by having their licence discs withheld and it stood by that statement.
“It would appear that as a result of this stance, someone at the Department of Transport Justice Project South Africa is threatening to seek an urgent high court application to compel the Department of Transport to provide them with the two government gazette notices published about the e-Roads regulations. has chosen to attempt to introduce legislation by ambush and this will not be tolerated. At the very least, the Department of Transport has demonstrated extreme incompetence coupled with a high level of mala fides (bad faith),” it said.
Wayne Duvenage, the chairman of the Opposition to Urban Tolling Alliance, said he had heard about the proposed amendments to allow for the withholding of vehicle licence renewal discs because of outstanding e-tolls bills but had not yet seen them.
He said the alliance needed to study them and would definitely submit comment.
The spokesman for the Transport Department, Tiyani PontoRikhotso, said in May that it was anticipated that it would take a maximum of three months to amend the Road Traffic Act regulations to allow for the withholding of vehicle licence renewal discs until outstanding e-toll accounts were paid.
Ponto-Rikhotso said at the time that the department was working around the clock to publish the draft regulations for comment, but would not be cutting any corners and would follow the process as prescribed by law. “The business imperative is still that you grow your volume base so you can get economies of scale. At the end of the day, your requirement is still going to move up that volume chain,” he said.
Nico Vermeulen, the director of the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of SA, said he did not know if tiered production level incentives were in the final APDP review proposal and stressed that volume production remained the objective of the APDP.
Vermeulen said provision had also been made for exemption from the current production threshold in exceptional circumstances.
Nicholls said the outcome of the APDP review was likely to be announced by the Trade and Industry Department (dti) within the next two weeks.
Roger Pitot, who was the advisor on the APDP review to the dti, said last week that he had no idea when the department would make an announcement about the outcome of the review, adding his contract with the department had expired at the end of April.
Pitot said he had progressively handed over his review report and recommendations from the end of last year into the first quarter of this year.
Mkhululi Mlota, the automotive chief director at the dti, said on Friday that the outcome of the review would “happen in due course”, but he could not give a definite date yet.
Nicholls said General Motors South Africa (GMSA) would be fine with the new tiered production level incentives legislation and would not need a special exemption to deal with its production volume challenges.
Exemptions
Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel in October granted both Nissan South Africa and GMSA temporary exemptions from the minimum annual production threshold in the APDP.
Tanya van Meelis, the chief economist at the Economic Development Department, told Business Report last month that Nissan SA and GMSA had experienced declining production volumes due to the economic slump in Europe, resulting in these manufacturers losing significant export volumes and Patel had granted a temporary reprieve to both.