RTIA Annual Report E-Book

the end of the reporting period. This partnership has identified three areas of collaboration viz, the rehabilitation programme, AARTO legislative education campaigns as well as the access to demerit points. The parties have agreed in-principle to finalise the concept document for the initiation of international conference on rehabilitation programme as part of preparation for Phase IV of AARTO Roll Out. The Agency expects to attract thought leaders in this area, from various best practice jurisdictions around the World to be key speakers at the conference. Challenges faced by the board The challenges, which faced the Board during the period under review, were in the areas of the outstanding proclamation of the AARTO Amendment Act, the promulgation of the AARTO supporting regulations as well as the implementation of the organisational structure, which is somehow transversally depen dent on the proclamation of the AARTO Amendment Act. The Board also faced challenges with the liquidity position of the Agency. Such liquidity having arose from the dysfunctionality of the National Contravention Register (NCR), which did not capture the accurate date of the serving of notices, to the extent that the infringers managed to make successful representations on infringement notices, which looked to have been served outside of the prescribed timelines, whereas such notices were served on the prescribed timelines. The only material failing being the inability of the system again to have updated the date of such serving on time. The other challenge was the serving of infringement notices outside of the legislated timeframes by the Issuing Authorities.

The business continuity challenges of SAPO continue to present a similar business continuity risk to the Agency because of the dependency of the Agency’s core business operations on SAPO and further that SAPO enjoys reserved right on the serving of AARTO paper based and electronic notices. It does not assist that the business rescue process of SAPO has not yet yielded business turnaround report as anticipated at the beginning of the process. The Agency will, during the 2024/2025 financial year, embark on urgent legislative amendments, which will be geared at diversifying section 30 of the AARTO Act as well as section 17 of the AARTO Amendment Act in order to allow the Agency to contract other competent service providers to implement the service of the AARTO documents. The year ahead The impact of the non-finalisation of the proclamation of the AARTO Amendment Act has forced the Agency to defer all the remaining phases of the AARTO Roll Out programme. The Agency will once again focus on the AARTO phases in the following: Phase II, which is planned to be rolled out in 69 Local and Metropolitan municipalities. Phase III, which is planned to be rolled out in the remaining 144 municipalities and Phase IV, which will see the introduction of the demerit points system and the rehabilitation programme during the 2024/2025 financial year.

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Road Traffic Infringement Agency • Annual Report 2023/24