Within seven months of being appointed, board members at the Road Traffic Infringement Agency (RTIA) had been paid an average of R770,000 each. For this they attended 33 meetings — more than one a week.
This emerged in the RTIA annual report for 2020/21, which was tabled in parliament last Monday, several months after the deadline for reporting.
Remuneration experts who spoke to the Sunday Times said the number of board meetings and the amounts paid to five non-executive directors were ‘completely outrageous’.
The agency, recently exposed as having paid its executives an average of R7.5m in 2020, got its third CEO in less than a year.
The annual report says the directors were appointed on 6 August 2020 after a lengthy period in which the RTIA had no board.
There were 11 ordinary meetings and 22 special meetings, as well as nine special events or engagements with the minister and deputy minister of transport.
The average payment works out at more than R23,000 for each board meeting.
Five board members earned over R700,000 whereas a sixth board member, advocate Ivy Thenga from the National Prosecuting Authority, attended seven board meetings and claimed nothing.
Despite its meetings, the RTIA failed to roll out Aarto on 1 July 2021 as expected by the transport minister. It also failed to defend the legislation, the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act, resulting in the high court declaring the act unconstitutional and invalid in January.
[Photo: Darren Stewart]