No more "omalume" for pupils

Parents who pay for their children to go to school in the back of bakkies have a week to make other plans.

Transport spokesperson Nathi Sukazi said on Wednesday that the law prohibiting anyone from carrying pupils or other people in the back of bakkies for profit will be effective from May 11.

He said anyone caught carrying children in the back of their bakkies will be arrested.

Sukazi said the department wants to see taxi operators getting involved in transporting pupils and assisting scholar transport drivers become legal and start using safer and roadworthy means to transport pupils.

KZN Scholar Transport Association spokesperson Jabulani Dladla, who also transports pupils in his bakkie said the department never told them officially about the newly amended law, and that they only came to learn of it through newspaper articles.