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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. <\/p>\n
These fears were expressed by MPLs in a hearing into the 2013\/14 provincial transport budget last week. <\/p>\n
In response, the provincial Transport Department\u2019s chief financial officer, Wayne Evans, said there were \u201cno major reasons\u201d why KZN had higher fees than other provinces. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been increasing our fees on an annual basis while others have not,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately what we want to happen is that the national Department of Transport should standardise fees across provinces,\u201d said Evans. <\/p>\n
MPLs said they had observed that several locally based companies had registered their fleets elsewhere. <\/p>\n
One was Telkom, which runs hundreds of vans all registered in the Eastern Cape. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
Govender said the high KZN fees were also hitting the pockets of local motorists who already had to contend with high fuel costs. <\/p>\n
The differences in fees between KZN and other provinces was \u201cshocking\u201d, he said <\/p>\n
For instance, a sedan weighing 1 500kg cost R525 in KZN, R420 in Gauteng and R312 in Mpumalanga. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
\u201cRemember that this is per year and a truck could last more than 10 years. Just imagine how much you will pay in KZN,\u201d said Govender. <\/p>\n
This view was backed by the DA spokesman on transport, Radley Keys. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis 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.\u201d <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
The Mercury <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
CAPE ARGUS Picture: Handout\/Supplied Related Stories Motor licence renewal anywhere in KZN \u00a0 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-19033","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19033","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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