Rules, regulations and laws don’t get changed often in South Africa, but when they do it is usually a fairly lengthy process.

But it seems that a piece of etolls legislation has been sneaked onto the books without going through the proper channels.

According to Justice Project South Africa (JPSA), the Department of Transport has published proposed amendments to the National Road Traffic Regulations that will make it completely legal for a department to withhold a motor vehicle licence disc if the driver has outstanding etolls.

The issue of withholding discs was first mentioned when the new dispensations were announced a couple of month ago, but the real problem is that the regulation in which the amendment appears, doesn’t appear to exist.

“Notice No. R. 607 in government gazette 38997, published for comments on Friday 17 July, 2015 refers to ‘regulation 11 of the e-Road Regulations, 2015’ which we have been unable to find anywhere,” Justice Project South Africa’s Howard Dembovsky said in a statement.

The proposed insertion under regulation 25 of the National Road Traffic Regulations reads as follows:

“Regulation 25 of the Regulations is hereby amended by the addition of the following paragraph after paragraph (h) of subregulation (1): (i) the owner of which has failed to comply with the requirements of the e-Road Regulations, 2015 published under section 58(1)(dA) and (dC) of the South African National Roads Agency Limited and National Roads Act, 1998 (Act No. 7 of 1998) for the payment of tolls where the South African National Roads Agency SOC Limited has applied a mark in terms of regulation 11 of those e-Road Regulations to the effect that the owner of the vehicle has outstanding tolls in respect of the vehicle concerned.”

JPSA said that by their count, the last time e-Road Regulations were published, was two years ago.

“According to our records, the last time that e-Road Regulations were published was in Notice No. R. 739 contained in government gazette No. 36911 of 9 October 2013. The short title of the said Regulations was ‘the e-Road Regulations, 2013’.”

Dembovsky also said that it is highly unlikely that the piece of legislation was missed by everybody – including JPSA.

“It is difficult, if not entirely impossible, to believe that absolutely everyone we know would have failed to submit comments on such a serious matter and therefore we hold significant doubt that any such amendments to the e-Road regulations under the SANRAL Act would have escaped anyone’s, least of all our and the media’s attention,” he said.

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