TRANSPORT RELATED SERVICES IN EMPANGENI TO RESUME

If you were worried about where you would renew your motor licence in and around Empangeni following the torching of the Transport Building over the weekend, then worry no more.

Services offered by the offices of Department of Transport in Empangeni will resume as from tomorrow. Using the department’s disaster management plan, it has been possible to recover from this incident and will be able to start providing services to the public as from Tuesday, 16 July 2002.

The Motor Licensing Bureau will now be housed permanently at the Empangeni Municipal offices in the central business district to enable the department to render the services to the Empangeni Community.

The National Department of Transport has also sent technicians to Empangeni to transfer data from the damaged building to another building on the same site.

"We should be operational by midday tomorrow.  This is pending the installation of additional data lines by Telkom. We need these data lines so that the National Traffic Information System (NATIS) to which all traffic offices in the province are linked, can function," said Kwazi Mbanjwa, Head of Transport in KZN.

Dr Mbanjwa said the department had been able to retrieve backup information from the central databases in Pretoria. As a result all the transactions that were done over the past two months had been recovered. Those people who might have written learner’s licence tests and were worried about whether they might have to rewrite the examinations need not worry as all that information has been retrieved.

"It has been a fruitless exercise for the arsonists as we have been able to retrieve information on all the transactions that have been made at that office for the past two months. If the aim of the arson attack was to hide information, that has been a total waste of time for these people," said Dr Mbanjwa.

There will be two counters at the Richards Bay Municipal offices dedicated to assisting with the registration and licensing for the NUF registration mark. The service offered at Empangeni Municipal offices will deal with ordinary renewal of motor vehicle licences. This will be done manually as all the electronic equipment was damaged in the fire.

"We will be able to provide most services except for the registration of new motor vehicles which will be dependent on how soon we get the NATIS lines up and running," said the Head of the KZN Transport Department.

The building was set alight around 3 o’clock on Saturday morning. The department believes that this action was related to licence issuing fraud discovered within the department by its Internal Special Investigating Unit.

"We had expected to be able to resume offering services on Thursday, 18 July 2002 but we are happy to say that we are now going to resume duty tomorrow (Tuesday 16 July 2002)," said Dr Mbanjwa.

The department regrets the inconvenience the community of Empangeni and surroundings have had to endue because of this act of arson. It is hope that the public will be patient and also assist in bringing to book those responsible for this burning of the building.

Meanwhile, the Department has announced that it will be assisting stranded motorists from Greytown, using the NUM registration mark, who need to renew their expired motor vehicle licences. The motorists can go to the Prince Alfred Street Motor Licence Bureau to get their licences renewed. This is due to the continuing national municipal workers strike action.

back