Dear Portfolio Committee On Transport,

COMMENTS:

New Number Plate Requisites (NNPR) is a National Number Plate Blank Manufacturer that supplies Number Plate Embossing Equipment and Number Plate Blanks to hundreds of Small, Medium and Micro Number Plate Embossing Businesses throughout South Africa. As the supplier of these Number Plate Manufacturing businesses we advise that in general they rely on us to represent and assist their businesses when dealing with institutions like the Provincial Departments of Transport, the National Department of Transport and the SABS.

Our comments on the Amendment of section 75 of Act 93 of 1996, as amended by section 13 of Act 8 of 1998 and section 31 of Act 21 of 1999, Clause 20, on page 10 of the National Road Traffic Amendment Bill are made due to the recent statements made by Transport Director General Alec Moemi, pertaining to the “embedding of microdots into a new number plate” that has been published in the media, the latest publication in Businesstech on 8 December 2020.

We refer to the Memorandum on the objects of the National Road Traffic Amendment Bill, 2008, page 16, Clause 3.19 as well as Clause 4 and advise that there has been no consultation with us as a stakeholder being a Number Plate Blank Manufacturer or a stakeholder as a representative of our approximately 500 Embossers, that may be affected by the amendment. Microdots on Number Plates have never been raised or discussed. Since 2015 industry represented by various concerned stakeholders had two meetings with Senior Officials of the NDOT, the most recent on 15 August 2019 and at no point Microdots on Number Plates have been raised. We are also part of the SABS National Standardisation Committee, (South African National Standard - SANS 1116) for the past 25 years and we advise that Microdots of Number Plates have also not been part of the discussions of the Committee.
We subsequently had no further communication from the NDOT thus we are surprized and concerned about the media release.

Cloning of number plates and illegal number plates needs to be addressed and we are of opinion that a program is required to ensure that only legal and compliant number plates are manufactured and sold to the motorists but there is a need for a proper consultation process in order to reach a solution that will be beneficial to Government, Business and ultimately the People of South Africa.

We trust that commercial agendas will not be entertained and look forward to fruitful discussions and successful implementation of a new National Number Plate and System in the near future once all proper consultations have taken place.

Thank you.

Johan Steenekamp