The All Truck Drivers’ Forum (ATDF) has come out in support of its members who were filmed pulling trucks over to check the credentials of truck drivers in Mpumalanga yesterday.
ATDF general secretary, Sifiso Nyathi, said that people had taken law enforcement into their own hands because the local authorities had failed to root out employers who were allegedly hiring foreign workers illegally.
A video and photograph circulating on WhatsApp shows a vehicle with ATDF branding parked behind a truck as a man walks away from the vehicle, allegedly after pulling it over to check the driver’s documents. The ATDF members were allegedly stopping trucks in Komatipoort and checking documents while officials looked on.
“In South Africa there is a lack of enforcement. There are too many laws. They can pass new laws and use current laws but the problem is the people in authority. We have useless people who do not do their jobs, which is why people come and do enforcement on their own because no one doing their job,” Nyathi said.
“The officials, the authorities are not doing their jobs, they are sitting in their offices sleeping, they are getting taxpayer money for nothing. There is a lack of enforcement with (the departments of) labour, home affairs and even the police themselves, so if people do it their own they must do it because at the end of the day who is suffering? We are the people who are suffering,” he said.
Employers were the cause of the conflict and the “daily demonstrations” of ATDF members, Nyathi added. He also alleged that bribes were exchanging hands to perpetuate the hiring of illegal drivers.
“We can’t blame people for taking enforcement into their hands because no one is enforcing the law. We are in this situation because of the employers,” he said.
Mpumalanga provincial Saps spokesperson, Colonel Donald Mdlhuli, referred Freight News’s questions regarding the incidents to the Road Traffic Management Corporation, which had not responded at the time of publication.
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