Staff manning the call centre at Cape Town Traffic Services in Green Point are tired of "taking the flak from the public because of erroneous traffic fines" sent out by SA Rugby boss Brian van Rooyen's company, Labat Traffic Solutions.
Traffic officers employed by the city say they are being randomly pulled off law enforcement duties to augment the call centre staff - despite the call centres being the responsibility of Labat, and not the city.
In a letter addressed to Cape Town City manager, Wallace Mgoqi, a traffic staff member wrote about the dismal working conditions at the call centre.
"The situation at traffic is in a terrible mess. Too few staff, too much work. We're three ladies in the call centre servicing the Unicity ... one cannot even go to the 'ladies'.
"The phone rings non-stop. The TCS system (a software system set up by Labat Traffic Solutions to keep track of traffic fines) is far from in place.
"We're taking the flak from the public because of erroneous traffic fines, we are doing lots of capturing documentation to be sent to TCS. A call centre should manage enquiries/queries, not other paper work."
Mgoqi has informed the call centre traffic staff he is looking into the matter.
Sources at Cape Town Traffic Services said the errors found on the traffic summonses include the crude manipulation of dates which they claim is an attempt to make the tickets valid (if a Notice of Intention to Prosecute or NIP is not issued within 30 days of the offence, the ticket becomes invalid); the duplication of traffic tickets and the duplication of vehicle registration numbers, as well as incorrect locations and details on the traffic summonses.
The Cape Times has been handed examples of traffic summonses issued recently in the City of Cape Town which contain glaring errors. Some of the traffic fines were issued more than 30 days after the traffic offence took place, while other motorists did not receive the required NIP.
In some cases, the traffic tickets do not show a vehicle make or registration number.
In the Helderberg, thousands of erroneous tickets sent out in the past three months and dating back to 2001 have been withdrawn by the courts.
Yet the public often pay the invalid fines for fear of being arrested in the wake of recent publicity campaigns like Operation Reclaim, say officials.
According to a copy of the agreement signed by the City of Cape Town with Labat Traffic Solutions, which the Cape Times has in its possession, the contractor was to have set up a call centre facility during office hours at its own expense to trace offenders telephonically and capture information.
Yet internal correspondence between senior staff members at Cape Town Traffic Services, which has been leaked to the Cape Times, shows a growing disquiet about the "true situation" of a Labat Traffic Solutions call centre operating from Johannesburg.
In one case a Labat Traffic Solutions staff member phoned from Johannesburg to query a summons at Cape Town Traffic Services.
He gave a contact number, which turned out to be the Rosebank Fire Station, according to the internal memo.
It was disclosed last week that the City of Cape Town was set to lose millions of rands in traffic fines as Labat Traffic Solutions had acknowledged it had a problem with its computer system, which sent thousands of notices with fictitious dates to offenders.
Labat Traffic Solutions earns a hefty 25 percent of every traffic fine paid and 50 percent of every camera fine paid.
Rudi Wolter, the City of Cape Town spokesperson on safety and security, has been appointed by Labat's public relations company to respond to queries about the company. Wolter said it had become necessary to privatise the issuing and serving of traffic tickets as the system in place needed to be overhauled.
"Our uniformed officers needed to be on the roads and we had to free up our resources."
To build a new system to keep track of all traffic fines, a service provider had been sought. "It was an open tender process and Labat was the cheapest model we could find."
Wolter said Labat Traffic Solutions had inherited a system that was flawed and if motorists had queries about traffic tickets, they could phone the call centre in Green Point.
"But the public must be warned it is not a fully fledged call centre yet and it might take some time for them to respond."
He has promised to investigate the allegations further.