The Cape Town municipality has given rugby boss Brian van Rooyen’s company another chance despite its role in a recent fiasco with traffic fines, the Cape Times website reported on Thursday.
It said the municipality had decided to re-assess its contract with Labat Traffic Solutions only at the end of August.
Three weeks ago, city officials revealed that 44 000 camera fines issued by the company on behalf of the city were found to be invalid. A multimillion-rand, five-year contract signed a year ago with Labat would be reviewed, officials said at the time.
The municipality had outsourced the issuing and serving of traffic fines to the company. Van Rooyen is group chief executive officer of Labat Traffic Solutions.
He is currently embroiled in controversy in his capacity as president of the SA Rugby Union. Van Rooyen is under pressure to step down amid accusations of poor leadership.
The Cape Town municipality warned Labat in October last year to improve its performance within six months. On Wednesday, the city said it would reassess the situation again at the end of August.
A Cape Times investigation over the past three weeks reportedly
uncovered problems in the contract with Labat Traffic Solutions.
These included errors in traffic summonses, legal hiccups in the serving of summonses and a virtual standstill in the execution of traffic warrants of arrest in the past year.
In the case of the 44 000 camera fines, motorists were not sent first notices for their camera fines, which is legally required.
Only second summonses were mailed by Labat.
The city is still investigating whether R2-million already paid by motorists for these fines will be repaid to them.
On Wednesday, city chief operations officer Rushj Lehutso said the mayoral committee had approved management procedures to improve the system and correct problems that might arise.
”The status of the system will be assessed at the end of August,” he said.
”The system and service provider’s performance were discussed. We are satisfied that past difficulties have been overcome and that the system is delivering benefits.”
Labat Western Cape project manager Shaheed Mohamed said the error made in issuing of the 44 000 camera fines would not happen again.
”It was purely a system upgrade that took place and that is why the error happened. There was no fraud or anything like that. All those fines were valid, but have now been withdrawn because of the error,” Mohamed said. – Sapa