The cause of Saturday’s fire at the Empangeni Road Traffic Inspectorate was arson, the KwaZulu-Natal department of transport confirmed on Sunday.
”The forensic officers from Pretoria have confirmed what we suspected — that the building was definitely set on fire. What we are now waiting for is their full report on the matter,” departmental head Kwazi Mbanjwa said in a statement.
He said a fire specialist team was called in when a blaze caused an estimated damage of R1-million to the Empangeni traffic offices on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast.
The fire was related to licence issuing fraud discovered within the department by its Internal Special Investigating Unit, Mbanjwa said.
The top three stories of the building containing computerised licence information were destroyed around 3am on Saturday.
The destroyed building housed the Motor Licensing Bureau, the Driver Licensing and Professional Driver’s Permits (PDP) issuing sections and the offices of the Regional Road Traffic Inspectorate’s management.
The Empangeni traffic office stored records for an area which included Ulundi and Richards Bay.
All the information was backed up on the national system based in Pretoria and traffic police work in the province would not be affected by the blaze.
Their offices would not be operational for about a week, but they were hopeful that some of their services would resume on Thursday.
”There will be no place to hide for fraudsters within the department. We will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to rid ourselves and the province of (such cowardice) practices,” Mbanjwa said. – Sapa