Unacceptable practices on truckers:
Licence fees:

The copy notice is from the Wadeville, Ekurhuleni, Metropolitan Municipality (EMM) (formerly Germiston) licensing department.

Basically any licence payer will have to pay licence fees in cash (i.e. cash notes)  or bring a BANK cheque!

My point is two-fold.

1. What do the large transport groups do when confronted with such bureaucracy? i.e. if they want to pay licence fees for five trucks, do they have to take plus/minus R50k cash to the licencing office?

2. Surely for the licencing department to demand a bank cheque, given the relatively small quantums of licence fees, the reluctance of banks to issue such cheques, this is an unreasonable demand?

I think the EMM cannot treat the licence payers this way. There must be better methods to be instituted for payment. Here are some ideas:

• How about a chassis number as an account number? A licence payer has to prove that both the account number (chassis number) and the registration number have been paid for.

• In terms of EFTs, does the council not have people to check whether payments/ EFTs are cleared or not? This then begs the question that if the council can’t institute their own internal procedures which at least are “client/user/trucker” friendly, maybe they should get a company who can to do it, i.e. a subcontractor!

In any event I think this is another area where the trucking fraternity is getting the “short straw”. The worst part about it is there is no defence for the Truckers against this kind of “admin inefficiency” to which they are vulnerable. The vulnerability manifests in the Truckers having to comply with ridiculous admin requirements, the most obvious one being the police clearance system of which so much has been written.

For comparison, the government department SARS has proven to be extremely efficient in many respects so why can’t the councils be as efficient?

This is especially relevant in that the transport licences generate fantastic revenues, so it is a “profit centre” as well!

Above is a copy of the notice as it appears on the wall of the EMM Wadeville licencing department for your interest.