Justice Project South Africa has warned South Africans that new regulations impacting transactions with a licensing authority are about to come into effect.
Regulation 32A of the National Road Traffic Regulations will go live on November 1, 2015, meaning anyone who wishes to transact with a licensing authority and the NaTIS System will be compelled to provide proof of their address details.
Regulation 25(7) has also been amended to authorise the refusal of the issue of a licence disc if a person has not provided proof of their physical and postal address by the insertion of Regulation 25(7)(i).
This means that all natural and juristic persons (companies, etc.) will have to furnish the following information in order to register vehicles, renew licence discs, driving licenses, etc:
1. Their full names, date of birth, identity number, and business registration number, along with any form of acceptable identification
2. Proof of postal and residential address, by means of any utility account. Provided that in the case where the person is not the person in whose name the utility account is issued, the person in whose name the utility account is issued must make an affidavit or affirmation declaring that the person resides at the address and the affidavit or affirmation must be accompanied by the utility account of such person.
3. in the case of a person who resides at an informal settlement, a letter with an official date stamp from the ward councillor confirming the postal and residential address of such person.
In addition, persons complying with these requirements must complete an NCP form and furnish it along with the above. This form is available at all licensing authorities or online.
"Although the same government gazette made reference to people being able to conveniently comply with this new requirement through the Department of Transport's website, JPSA has been unable to find any facility provided on that website, the eNaTIS website or any traffic-related government Agency website to do so," said Howard Dembovsky, National Chairman for Justice Project SA.
"This will undoubtedly contribute to longer queues at licensing authorities than are strictly necessary. JPSA also foresees that there are going to be a lot of flared tempers in queues at the SA Post Office, where a significant portion of motorists go to renew their vehicle licence discs when such people pay licence renewal fees and are simply given a receipt with no licence disc on it due to not having complied with this provision.
"It is not unreasonable to assume that some people will jump to the conclusion that the reason their licence disc is being withheld is because they have outstanding e-tolls, even though no such proposed legislative amendments have been published for comment as yet," Dembovsky added.
"It is also not unreasonable to assume that many licensing authorities will take this as an additional opportunity to tell people that they have to pay all of their outstanding traffic fines in order to get their licence disc, even though this too is not true.
"We would therefore advise motorists to rather go to the licensing authority armed with all of the required address verification documentation so as to enable them to comply with this provision."
