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ESTABLISHED 1991
WEDNESDAY 1315 AUGUST 2014
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READY: This car just sec onds before it was crushed. Photos: Sidwell Guduka
Department scraps cars } Sidwell Guduka
ABOUT 200 impounded vehicles in the Free State were compacted and converted into scrap metal. This happened after motorists, whose cars were impounded and held by the police, had failed to pay the required fees to have them released. The province’s Department of Police, Roads and Transport published a notice in the Goverment Gazette on 28 March last year and advertised the same notice on different media channels, pleading with owners to recover their vehicles within 30 days from the date of publication of the notice. However, the department’s plea fell on deaf ears as only a handful of them heeded the call. “All the scrapped cars were those which were impounded and held by the police between 1999 and February 2013.
“Despite our call to the owners to pay the required fees and have their cars released, the majority of them failed to come forward. “We gave then ample time to do so,” Mangaliso Xaba, director: Transport, Law Enforcement and Tracing Unit, told Express. “Our initial decision was to sell those vehicles at a public auction, but we decided against it. “With the exception of only four cars which were still in a good condition, the value of the rest of the other cars had deteriorated. Honestly, the value of those cars would not add up to what the owners owed, that’s why we decided to rather crush them instead of selling them,” he said. “Before scrapping those cars, we followed all the procedures required by law to notify the owners to come and fetch their cars upon payment of required fees. “We also made announcements to
the motorists through the local and national press and radio stations,” he added. Xaba said his department charged an impounded fee of R2 000 per vehicle and that it levied a R40 storage fee for each day a vehicle remained in its custody. “I think the amount to have the cars released became too much for the owners, hence they failed to pay up,” the director explained. “In future we’ll no longer keep impounded cars for a longer period in our custody. It is costly to the government, because we are forced to hire security to guard them,” Xaba concluded. The scrapping of impounded cars began in Bloemfontein where 52 cars were destroyed last Wednesday. More vehicles were compacted in Qwaqwa (40), Welkom (35), Sasolburg (30) and Kroonstad (13). ) For more photos and to watch a video, visit www.express-news.co.za.
CRUSHED: One of many impounded cars that were scrapped in Blo emfontein last Wednesday.