The City of Cape Town is reviewing the multimillion-rand, five-year contract it awarded to SA Rugby boss Brian van Rooyen's Labat Traffic Solutions after acknowledging that more than 44 000 camera fines the company has issued are illegal.
The city is also investigating whether it will pay back more than R2-million to the motorists who have paid invalid camera fines.
Following intense media pressure about the thousands of erroneous traffic fines issued by Labat in Cape Town and the Helderberg, the city announced on Monday night that it would be considering a report from its chief legal adviser at the next executive mayor and mayoral committee meeting later this month.
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Labat won the contract in May 2004 to issue and serve traffic fines in the unicity. Up until Monday night city officials had claimed the company's computerised system was "95 percent on track" and that the errors in the traffic fines were simply teething problems.
| 'All appointed certificates have to be withdrawn' |
Among the errors court and administration sources say they are seeing on the traffic summonses include the manipulation of dates, the duplication of vehicle registration - correct registration but wrong vehicle - and a lack of recorded personal details.
The director of public prosecutions has issued a directive saying that in the case of camera offences, all first notices have to be mailed to a motorist within 30 days of the date of the offence, failing which the ticket will be invalid.
"Batches of camera notices where the offence took place during... October 2004 were mailed to the public, but did not comply with the 30-days mailing directive," the city statement said.
"The city is now advised that 2 915 notices (involving) R652 775 were not compliant. This is being verified and checked by the city."
The city has also been advised that 44 449 first notices of camera offences were not printed and, instead of the legal process being complied with, the second notices were mailed. About 6 500 members of the public have paid just over R2-million in settling these camera fines and this information is being verified by the city.
| 'Now all the summons servers have to be authorised by our legal services department' |
On May 4, the city instructed Labat not to go ahead with any judicial processes involving the remaining 39 000 "non-compliant" notices. The city has asked motorists who believe their tickets could be illegal to call 021 406 8740 or approach their local traffic department office.
"It is my personal view that any money paid in terms of any non-compliant notice issued on behalf of the city be refunded and such notices withdrawn." David Erleigh, the councillor responsible for safety and security, said in the statement on Monday night.
All media enquiries were directed to city traffic co-ordinator Heathcliff Thomas, who said on Monday night he had not seen or been handed a copy of the press statement sent out by the city.
Thomas was the main speaker at a press conference called last week to reassure the public that the contract with Labat Traffic Solutions was on track. At the press conference he said the thousands of backdated erroneous fines issued by Labat in the Helderberg had been sent out because of "someone pressing the wrong button".
Meanwhile, the Cape Times has established that since Labat Traffic Solutions took over the responsibility of serving traffic fine summonses, some of the people it hired to do the job have been found to be dishonest and others not to have the necessary police clearance.
An internal memo between two senior city officials, which was leaked to the Cape Times, showed how, in October last year, the City of Cape Town ordered that the serving of all traffic fine summonses cease immediately until the people serving summonses had been given official clearance.
"All appointed certificates have to be withdrawn and all summons servers have to go to re-apply for authorisation and appointment certificates, which will involve South African Police Service clearance, affidavits by applicants and summons server numbers," wrote a city official.
The agents hired by Labat to serve summonses were informed that all traffic summonses had to be returned to the city.
Labat Traffic Solutions signed a five-year, multimillion-rand contract with the City of Cape Town last May.
City officials were warned of the problem in a mayoral committee report presented in October, shortly before summons servers were ordered to cease operation until they were given clearance.
"Labat started the process with respect to the serving of summonses, but it was later found that not all the summons servers were authorised by the city to serve these documents," the mayoral committee report said.
"It was also established that some process servers were not honest when serving these documents and were not fully aware of their duties when serving process documents. The parties to the agreement have agreed that a workshop is required with these process servers in order to provide them with proper training in this regard."
Rudi Wolter, the City of Cape Town's spokesperson on safety and security, said that there had been some problems with summons serving, including a case where traffic offenders handed over money to summons servers, but the situation had been resolved.
"Now all the summons servers have to be authorised by our legal services department," he said.
However, Cape Town traffic officers claimed this week that the city continued to lose revenue because of problems with traffic summons serving and the subsequent delays, which could lead to tickets being declared invalid.
"Hardly any summonses have been served because all traffic summonses had to be handed back to the city, causing huge delays in processing," said a senior traffic officer.
Before Labat took over the task, the serving of traffic summonses was mostly handled by traffic officers, who supplemented their low salaries with overtime pay.
Labat Traffic Solution's Western Cape project manager, Shaheed Mohamed, who is in charge of the traffic summons serving operation, confirmed there had been problems with serving agents working for the companies contracted by Labat, including in two cases the forging of traffic offenders' signatures.
- This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Times on May 10, 2005
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