The Democratic Alliance (DA) is calling the newly appointed MEC of Community Safety, Security and Liaison, Vusi Shongwe, to address the issue of ill equipped and always offline Traffic Departments.
The DA is concerned some local municipalities are more often struggling to roll out services to residents because they are ill equipped or always offline leaving users stranded. Over the past years, many licencing departments or offices in places like White River, Msukaligwa, Govan Mbeki, Chief Albert Luthuli, Nelspruit, eMalahleni, Lekwa and Thembisile Hani have been struggling to roll out services to their respective residents within a reasonable time, and that is either due to a shortage of resources such as ink or the special paper on which to print on, or issues with the systems being offline.
Given the above challenges, the DA also calls on MEC Shongwe to assess their current system and to make improvements where needed. We call on him to ensure that local traffic departments are adequately stocked and in a condition to provide a service to residents of this province. The previous MEC, Gabisile Tshabalala, failed to address the matter.
The challenges experienced in these offices were further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the related lockdown in our country.
Scores of people are made to stand in long queues in order to access a service just to be told that the office would have to close because of some operational issues.
The DA wants answers on why White River Licencing office is closing at 13:00 every day and turning back people instead of helping them.
On Thursday the DA delivered a Motion Without Notice in the Provincial Legislature calling on this provincial government to also do the following:
– To deal with the issue of snaking queues as this pose a threat to the lives of the residents accessing services in these offices.
– To deal with the issue of forever and constantly offline systems that is putting residents off and making their lives miserable.
– To ensure that all licensing departments are adequately stocked and are fully operational.
– To extend the working hours of the Licencing department in White River in order to make it more accessible to the residents which it services.
As part of another solution to the problems above, the DA also proposes that the Province must take over the function to issue licenses and disks as there remains municipalities which are struggling to perform the services daily. Either their offices are closed completely, or they chase those who are waiting in the queue and this is unacceptable.