Johannesburg - Justice Project South Africa is holding back for now on applying for a High Court order against 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.
It has been irked by proposed amendments that were published for public comment on July 17 that referred to “regulation 11 of the e-road regulations, 2015” which it has been unable to find anywhere, even on the South African government website.
24-hour notice
This led to Justice Project SA sending an e-mail to national Transport Department officials John Motsatsing and Phillip Mgagane on Monday, placing the department on 24-hour notice to provide it with the two government gazette notices that should have been published about the e-road regulations.
Howard Dembovsky of Justice Project SA said yesterday that it had not received any response from Motsatsing, Mgagane or the department.
Dembovsky said he had also not received any notification that the e-mails sent to Motsatsing and Mgagane had been read and would therefore “not be running off to court yet” but this “doesn’t stop us from barking”.
He said Justice Project SA would give these officials and the department a bit of time to respond to their request before deciding on the way forward.
Dembovsky stressed that Justice Project SA could not provide any comment on the updated regulations that were published for public comment on July 17 because it did not have the originating e-road regulations to reference.
It doubts the originating e-road regulations exist.
Dembovsky said they therefore did not know under what circumstances the SA Road Agency Limited (Sanral) thought it might impose an administration mark as a means to recover unpaid e-tolls.
He said the closing date for the submission of public comments was August 14 and if Justice Project SA had not received a response from the department by then, it would “definitely consider the option of getting a legal remedy on it”.
Dembovsky cautioned people and organisations that wanted to “quickly” submit their comments on the proposed amendments.
Valid comment
He said valid comment could only be provided when they knew under what circumstances an administrative mark could be imposed on motorists with unpaid e-toll accounts. Dembovsky added that it was also impossible to comment on one badly worded insertion into the regulations in the wrong subregulation and into a sub regulation that did not deal with the withholding of licence discs.
The Department of Transport failed to respond to a Business Report request for comment on this issue.
Despite reminders yesterday that it had not yet responded, the department again failed to respond.
Business Report