Litigation: Outa takes on Aarto demerit system

The Pretoria taxi industry and the Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (Outa) have rejected the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences (Aarto) Act demerit system expected to kick in on 1 July. According to a Pretoria News report, the reasons the controversial new system would make life difficult for motorists, the two stakeholders said, included corruption and that infringement notices sent in various electronic ways could not confirm delivery. The demerit system was recently gazetted by Minister of Transport, Fikile Mbalula, who also announced that R500m had been budgeted for the roll-out by the department. The system meant that every driver would start at zero demerit points on their driving licence, but if 12 points were accumulated, the driving licence would be suspended for three months.

However, the executive director of accountability at Outa, Stefanie Fick, said the organisation was taking the government to court on 18 and 19 October to have the entire Act scrapped for two reasons. She said the Act was unconstitutional because it did not respect the separation of powers and was taking away the powers of local governments like Tshwane to regulate themselves. Fick said that second to that was the fact that the service provision of the new Act was unconstitutional in the sense that infringement notices could just be sent to people through electronic communication means like e-mail. 'How could they be sure that a person has indeed received that notice? Our e-mails receive thousands of messages, and some are blocked as spam,' she said.