Last week the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC) published a proposed amendment to the Road Traffic Management Corporation Regulations.

Within that proposal was a list of fees that were related to various services that the RTMC wants to make available online. You can see a list of these fees below.

The wording in the table above is important to heed as it appears to have caused a lot of confusion locally.

From the proposal it appears as if booking and issuance are two separate events, especially when 2(3)(d) exclusively mentions “booking” with no mention of issuance.

Despite this the RTMC has said that the fees listed include the cost of the card itself.

“Transaction fees have remained unchanged at R72, R250 is the cost currently paid when applying for a new card. Nothing has changed. The difference is that in future a motorist can opt to do these online rather than at the DLTC,” the RTMC tweeted.

“The only difference is that in future a motorist can opt to do these online rather than at the DLTC and they will be able to opt to have the documents delivered to them,” the corporation added.

Why the RTMC didn’t state that the R250 fee was for the online booking and issuance of a credit card format driving licence is unclear and points to the vague nature of proposals that pass through government.

This is not something new though, government has a long history of publishing vague bills that are open to interpretation. Some of those bills make it to the point of becoming an Act and the vagueness persists.

Even if the R250 fee includes the issuance of a driving licence, it’s important to comment on the proposal.

These comments must be submitted by 3rd October 2021 to either Advocate Ngwako Thoka or John Motsatsing via the email addresses below or mailed to Department of Transport, Private Bag X193, Pretoria, 0001 marked for the attention of either Thoka or Motsatsing.

The email addresses follow below. Please note that we format email addresses this way to avoid scrapers and nefarious individuals from simply copying and pasting the information. Simply replace the [at] with the @ symbol and the [dot] with full stops.

• thokan[at]dot[dot]gov[dot]za
• motsatsj[at]dot[dot]gov[dot]za

We recommend keeping a close eye on this matter as while the RTMC says this fee includes issuance of the driving licence card itself, that fact could evolve as the proposed amendments do.

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]