Rescue vehicles such as those driven by paramedics are annually due for renewal and this should be a fairly easy process to implement. The opposite however seems to be true and it is a tiresome and frustration experience. A fact, which local Paramedic Response & Consulting Unit, PRU, can attest to.
Rescue vehicles are required to obtain a special licence failing which they are not allowed to drive with the emergency lights on. The necessities of these lights are crucial in indicating to other road users that the vehicle is responding to crises.
PRU submitted their renewal application on October 25, last year to a private testing station, Supreme Security in Nelspruit. The vehicle was declared roadworthy and reclassified as a rescue vehicle and recorded on a database.
“That is when the trouble started,” says Marius van Staden, PRU. “Numerous forms were provided by the testing station to be completed and then stamped by SAPS. Once this had been done the documents had to be handed in at the testing station’s administration department. Two weeks later, when enquiring about the progress of the paperwork, I was informed that they had been lost and that I would have to do it all over again!”
After four trips to Nelspruit filling out new paperwork and following-up on the status of the application, van Staden still does not know when he will receive the said licence.
Hazyview Herald spoke to Supreme Security about the dilemma and was informed that the required proof of PRU’s response to actual emergency situations had not been supplied. Mr M.M.Musi, Department Cummnity Safet, Security Liaison, was also contacted and he requested that an email be sent to him with the details of the problem. He would address the query and provide feedback. To date, Mr Musi’s feedback has not been received.
