Foreign truck driver permit system delayed to late October

The North Gauteng High Court has ordered the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) to delay the implementation of its new work-permit regime for foreign truck drivers working for local companies, until October 28.

The DHA had begun enforcing a work permit regime for all foreign truck drivers working for local companies crossing the border into South Africa as of July 1.

Hitherto, foreign truck drivers working for South African companies could enter the country with a visitor's visa that was valid for 30 days.

However, the local trucking industry was heavily opposed to the July implementation of the new system, saying that there was a month-long backlog in the processing of the work permits by the DHA.

A group of nearly 30 trucking companies had lodged a court case against the implementation at the beginning of July.

The case had been up for argument in the court this week, during which time legal counsel for the DHA had provided the additional information sought by the court at the previous hearing.

The group of trucking companies had accepted the court’s decision to grant a three-month interim extension for the implementation of the work permit system, Global Migration SA MD Leon Isaacson told Engineering News Online.

If the DHA had not complied with the court’s order to grant the foreign drivers access or were not processing the work permit applications in time, the trucking companies would head back to court on October 28, to ask for a further extension.

Edited by: Mariaan Webb