Pretoria – The country’s National Traffic Information System (eNatis) is heading for a total standstill if Telkom is not paid the R8 million owed to it by Monday.
Telkom already on Friday cut all telephone lines to the premises in Midrand from where the system is being operated. It will on Monday terminate all data services – the lifeline of the eNatis system – if not paid.
If the system is no longer in operation, it would, among others, mean that vehicles cannot be registered, licenses – including driver’s – cannot be renewed, no driver’s licences can be issued and the police cannot verify in a roadblock whether a vehicle is stolen or not.
“It will be a national crisis if this happened,” Simon Zwane, spokesperson of the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) said.
This emerged on Friday in the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, when RTMC and the Department of Transport asked for an extremely urgent order evicting Tasima from the premises. It wants Tasima to immediately hand over all the data pertaining to the millions of vehicles and vehicle owners across the country.
The Constitutional Court in November last year ordered that Tasima had to transfer the eNatis system to the RTMC within 30 days, or in accordance with a handover plan – a so called migrant plan in terms of which the parties will have to agree to.
Tasima interpreted this that it can gradually hand over the system, while the RTMC and the department said they should have handed over by December 10.
The department’s eviction order was due to be heard on Tuesday in the urgent court, but they on Friday rushed to court in the wake of Telkom’s threat to terminate its services.
Judge Hans Fabricius was told that the department cannot pay Telkom before Tasima handed over the control of the system. Tasima, on the other hand, said the department had paid Telkom up to November and they should continue doing so.
It accused the department of now holding the eNatis system at ransom.
Judge Fabricius said it was impossible to resolve these issues in the urgent court as the court papers ran into more than 600.
“If this case cannot be heard today will the whole country collapse,” the judge wanted to know. Advocate Paul Mc Nally SC, for Tasima responded that “I cannot say that is not true.”
He said if the department paid Telkom today, it would save the situation.
The judge decided to remove the matter from the roll and ordered the parties to speak to Deputy Judge President Aubrey Ledwaba to allocate a judge to especially hear the matter.
Judge Ledwaba in chambers told the parties to return on Wednesday, when the matter will be heard for two days.
But while negotiations were ongoing in chambers, Telkom had send a message that it had already cut the landlines and were preparing to cut the data services by Monday.
Tasima’s lawyers, when asked about this by the Pretoria News, at the time seemed unaware of Telkom’s message. Lawyers for the department and RTMC seemed unsure about the next step, but said they would probably be back in court on Monday morning to try and urgently save the situation.
They agreed that by the time the case was to resume in court on Wednesday, it may be too late. Advocate Makhosini Msibi said the situation was dire, as by then the entire road management system in the country could have come to a standstill.
This will not only affect all traffic centres in the country, but it will also hamper the work of the police, he said, who had to verify vehicle registration numbers across the country.
The system contains the details of about 12 million registered vehicles and that of about 11 million registered drivers.