Durban - A South Coast traffic officer has taken her bosses to court to force them to reinstate her driving licences which, she alleges, were cancelled without explanation to force her out of her job.
Olengapushnee Naidoo, a mother of three, says she “might as well be fired” because she cannot do her job unless she can drive.
Her predicament is made worse because she cannot fetch and carry children, shop or consult her attorneys.
In her urgent application which came before Durban High Court Judge Piet Koen, Naidoo, 46, who lives at Park Rynie, said she had worked for the Umdoni municipality since 2001.
She said the administration of transport and traffic was overseen by the MEC and the provincial traffic department and, while the local licence test centre was staffed by employees of the municipality, it was overseen by the province.
“The relationship between the two offices is not harmonious,” she said, alleging that her relationship with her immediate supervisor was “difficult”.
Naidoo said she was issued with the standard Code 8 (car) licence in 1987, and a Code 10, heavy duty, licence in 2000.
In 2011, she obtained a Code 14 (truck and trailer) licence.
With this licence, the driver was entitled to drive any vehicle of a lower code, other than a motorcycle.
In July she was subjected to a disciplinary inquiry pertaining to allegations that she had lost her service pistol.
Stressed, she went on leave and, while booked off, was visited by four officials who said her Code 14 licence had been cancelled, producing an official document which she refused to sign and had never seen since.
The head of the testing centre told her of an entry on the database that the licence had been “fraudulently obtained”.
She went to great lengths to get to the bottom of this but still knew nothing.
The relevant authorities agreed to an order reinstating her Code 8 and Code 10 licences.
The Mercury