Legal battle over permit hikes drags on

The legal battle about last year’s massive cross-border permit cost hikes is still dragging on rather slowly, according to Gavin Kelly, technical and operations manager of the Road Freight Association (RFA), with lawyers for the two sides still playing tennis with the documentation for the case. In this, the RFA has taken the permit authority, the Cross- Border Road Transport Agency (CBRTA), to court after a last-minute attempt last year to find an out-of-court solution failed. All this followed the cost hike for cross-border permits – condemned by road transporters as being “fatal”. Applicable from April 1, 2011 the cost, for example, of a 12-month new/renewal permit for Freight Class 2 (the classification into which the standard cross-border truck fits) was R5 720, a 239.88% increase over the previous cost of R1 690. And there was a dual problem. Not only did the CBRTA hike up the cost of these permits, but it demanded one permit for each country. The RFA is, therefore, in the process of lodging an urgent application to the court for the permit tariffs to be set aside. Kelly was loath to forecast when this matter would be finally decided.