The modern world is full of exciting possibilities and conveniences such as being able to put your credit card into an ATM machine on the other side of the globe to SA and access funds in the local currency. Ah, the magic of international computer networks.
However, on the other end of the scale, back in Jozi, just don`t try to renew your car registration at the most convenient traffic office. I did a double take, not to mention a figurative backward flip, when I was told that it was impossible to renew my car licence anywhere but at the original registration office.
Come on! This is the computer age. Some vendors are telling us the network is the computer and I can draw money easily from my bank account from an ATM in San Francisco or London, but I can`t pay for my car licence in Alberton (which is convenient and close to where I live).
Instead I have to make a special trip to the traffic department in the centre of Johannesburg (which is neither close nor convenient), brave the taxi traffic, spend hours searching for parking, and then take my life in my hands walking kilometres to the traffic office to stand who knows how long in a queue (assuming I find the right one on the first attempt) just to pay my licence fee.
Come on! This is the computer age.
Warwick Ashford, portals managing editor
Every office has a means for printing new car licence discs, surely it should be a simple matter of accessing the necessary data and sending it to the printer. Apparently not.
I have a really hard time understanding how in this day and age it is not possible to do this thing, particularly as it is possible to renew one`s drivers licence at any office.
Traffic officers these days are even able to access information on traffic offences from the side of the road, but you cannot renew your licence in Sandton when you live there, but your car is registered elsewhere.
After much hand-wringing and standing on my lip, I finally managed to find someone with an explanation. It wasn`t a good one. "Each office is on a separate database," I was told.
Why? Does this make any sense to anyone?
Having stood in a reasonably long queue in the Alberton office only to be told I had to go into the city centre and stand in a much, much longer queue made me see red to say the least.
Since that dark day I have vented my frustrations at every opportunity, but it seems this anomaly is not limited to car licence renewals. While some fines for traffic offences can be paid online, others can`t. So just beware next time you are bombing through the Karoo towards Cape Town. If you pick up a fine as you blow through one of the towns that register nothing more than a blur on the side of the road, you may have to go back to the one-horse town and find the local cop shop to pay, especially if you forget to pay on time.
As I walked out of the Alberton office thoroughly browned off, disillusioned and frustrated, I felt like a man adrift in the ocean dying of thirst. Technology everywhere, but none of it any use.
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