Vehicle registration fees in KZN are fleecing motorists and could be chasing major fleet owners to other provinces.
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KwaZulu-Natal - Vehicle registration fees in KwaZulu-Natal, which are the highest in the country, are fleecing motorists and could be chasing major fleet owners to other provinces, losing the provincial government a valuable source of revenue.
These fears were expressed by MPLs in a hearing into the 2013/14 provincial transport budget last week.
In response, the provincial Transport Department’s chief financial officer, Wayne Evans, said there were “no major reasons” why KZN had higher fees than other provinces.
“We have been increasing our fees on an annual basis while others have not,” he said.
However, the department had initially planned to increase the fees by 10 percent for the next three years but now had decided to ease up and increase them by only 6 percent instead.
“Ultimately what we want to happen is that the national Department of Transport should standardise fees across provinces,” said Evans.
MPLs said they had observed that several locally based companies had registered their fleets elsewhere.
One was Telkom, which runs hundreds of vans all registered in the Eastern Cape.
IFP finance committee member Les Govender said his concern was that KZN was losing out on revenue from vehicles that were using the provincial road infrastructure.
Govender said the high KZN fees were also hitting the pockets of local motorists who already had to contend with high fuel costs.
The differences in fees between KZN and other provinces was “shocking”, he said
For instance, a sedan weighing 1 500kg cost R525 in KZN, R420 in Gauteng and R312 in Mpumalanga.
The difference was higher for trucks. A truck weighing up to 8 000kg cost R11 450 in KZN, R9 504 in Gauteng and R7 458 in Mpumalanga.
“Remember that this is per year and a truck could last more than 10 years. Just imagine how much you will pay in KZN,” said Govender.
This view was backed by the DA spokesman on transport, Radley Keys.
“This has a negative effect on the income generated through licensing and opens the door to potential large-scale corruption due to the lack of control by the KZN Department of Transport over vehicles licensed in other provinces.”
Gavin Kelly, the technical operations manager at the Road Freight Association, said licensing costs were a major factor for operators and it made sense that operators registered their fleets in provinces with lower fees.
The Mercury