Moratorium will stop traffic police from harassing tourist vehicles

A moratorium or amnesty is set to be introduced to prevent traffic police from harassing tourist vehicle owners for not having a valid operating licence.

Minister of Tourism Patricia de Lille confirmed the decision while speaking to delegates at a Southern Africa Tourism Services Association (Satsa) conference in Durban at the weekend.

“The Department of Transport is investigating and conducting a legal assessment of the possibility [of implementing] a moratorium/amnesty on law enforcement.

“According to the minister of transport, this has been done and the minister issued an instruction to provincial authorities to halt the harassment of tour operators,” said De Lille.

Read: Tourism body says DoT has not ‘cleared’ vehicle operating licence backlog

This follows Satsa complaints dating back many months, if not years, about delays with the National Public Transport Regulator (NPTR) issuing vehicle operating licences to tour operators.

Tourists stranded on roadside

This has led to even foreign tourists sometimes being stranded at the side of the road because a law enforcement officer has impounded a tourist vehicle for not having a valid operating licence, causing severe reputational damage to the operator and to South Africa as a tourist destination.

Satsa transport committee chair Onne Vegter said on Monday the association has repeatedly asked for a moratorium and would welcome one on the impoundment of tourist vehicles “because quite simply it’s not possible right now for many operators to comply with the law”.

“The NPTR, the regulator, is not functioning as it should and it’s taking months, sometimes years, just to get your operating licence. We field calls almost every day from operators who are getting fined and getting impounded,

“We’ve seen tourists getting dumped on the side of the road by overzealous traffic officials, who impound the vehicle, and then that operator has to pick up the damage,” said Vegter.

“It’s not just financial damage, it’s reputational damage as well to the operator and South Africa as a destination because those tourists go home and complain about that experience and say ‘don’t visit South Africa’.”

Read: Tour operator vehicle licensing issue damaging tourism, the economy

Vegter said a moratorium will have to be gazetted but this has not happened yet.

“We would welcome a moratorium but it will have to be clearly communicated to all levels of law enforcement.”

Systemic problem

Satsa CEO David Frost said problems with the turnaround time for the issuing of tourism operator licences has been an issue since 2017 and that it is a systemic problem.

Satsa highlighted the issue during a media conference in June last year but maintains nothing has changed apart from the eradication of the operating licence at that time.

Frost welcomed De Lille’s announcement indicating that she has prioritised improving the turnaround time for the issuing of these licences.

“The whole way the licences are processed, approved {and so on] is absolutely suboptimal and we need to fix the system,” Frost said.

“But what we always get is a ‘Band-Aid’ on the problem and then we clear the backlog but while we are clearing the backlog, the backlog builds up again [from new applications] because we have a systemic problem at the NPTR.”

Initial backlog cleared

De Lille said at the weekend that the Tourism Business Council of South Africa and Satsa have worked with the Department of Transport to improve the turnaround time for the issuing of tourism operator licences.

“A few days ago, I met with Minister of Transport Sindisiwe Chikunga where she shared the Department of Tourism’s work in this regard. We both agreed to push this work even harder to eradicate barriers and backlogs.

“The Department of Transport understands that tourism is an important sector that makes a meaningful contribution to the economy and the brand South Africa.”

De Lille said the department shared its own challenges related to this work that contributed to a backlog of 1 014 operating licences by June 2022, adding that since July 2022 the NPTR had dedicated three days per week to deal with the backlog until it was cleared.

“The initial backlog of operating licences was cleared by the September 2022 deadline. There is now a backlog of 418 current applications,” she said.

De Lille said they must work together now to also resolve the matter of tour operators who have not collected their licences.

‘Task team’

Frost said Satsa deeply appreciates that De Lille has engaged the Minister of Transport, adding that Satsa has been engaging with the department for a number of years on these issues.

Read: Tourism industry calls on president’s ‘red tape team’ to save it from being strangled

He said a task team was even set up by previous minister of transport Fikile Mbalula.

“The trouble is that when these task teams are set up, we go and engage and put all of the sensible solutions on the table but then the Department of Transport does not actually do anything about it.

“We feel our minister [De Lille] is getting her head around the problem and it’s not easy because it’s not in her remit to fix … [but] the Ministry of Transport’s.”

Operators blamed

Vegter said it seems the NPTR is now putting the blame on operators for not collecting their operating licences that have been approved.

However, he believes “a large chunk” of these are for operators who no longer have those vehicles and have had to reapply for licences for their new vehicles, and these applications are now “in a new backlog”.

He said a second aspect is that quite a number of operators claim they have sent the documents for their operating licences but have not heard anything back from the NPTR.

“The communication from the NPTR is so dysfunctional that it’s non-existent. I think it’s administrative challenges [on] the NPTR side and poor communication that is holding up some of these applications from being finalised,” said Vegter.

He added that the NPTR board or committee is supposed to adjudicate operating licence applications and a regulation specifies that there is a 14-day turnaround time for applications from accredited tourism operators.

Read: Government ignores tourism industry’s plea for assistance

However, Vegter questions how the NPTR can issue an operating licence within 14 days, as required by the regulations, if the board or committee that adjudicates the applications does not even sit once a month.

“It’s systemic issues like this that are causing the delays,” he said.