The SAPS and a private sector company shows some initiative at last regarding the fight against crime. They've initiated a new crime reporting SMS service. Primedia seems to be the company behind this anonymous crime reporting scheme which costs in the region of R50 million. There are two ways of reporting crime which includes SMS to 32211 or logging on to www.crimeline.co.za. Now, let's start using this and see if the SAPS has the resources to cope!

There's lots to scream about this week. With eNatis being the shambles that it's in and the public sector strike for the past week things don't look too good for government.

eNatis is a R400 million vehicle and licensing system which turned out a total flop. Die Beeld, an Afrikaans newspaper reported on the bad security holes in this computerised system. Government authorities tried to gag them but the courts were on the newspapers side and all was revealed. And it's not that the relevant powers were not aware of the weaknesses in the system, yet they still introduced it. The whole system as a matter of fact kept on falling over for days after introduction. Queues were longer than voting day queues in 1994 all over the country. No vehicle registrations, no license renewals, no drivers license applications. An abortion, that's what it was. And the end is not in sight.

"The five-year eNatis contract was awarded in 2002 to a consortium, Masiye Phambili, which subsequently formed a privately-owned company, Tasima. The consortium, says the department, consists of arivia.kom, Webcom Consulting and Thuthukani Information Technology Services " reports iTWeb with the Department of Transport extending the contract with Tasima. If this was a private sector company, the contractor would've been fired after paying penalties, or would've carried on paying penalties until the system worked. With IT projects this is a bit difficult in that the originator must sort the problems out. A new contractor will have to start a-fresh, even with an off the shelve open source system such as the one used. But this is Africa after all.

Another South African phenomenon is public sector strikes. All the public sector unions (barring two) are on a pay strike. Government doesn't have the money to meet their 12% pay increase demands and offered 6%. After lots of pre-strike meetings they couldn't find common ground. After a week of strikes the unions lowered their demand to 10% and government upped theirs to 6.5%. Unions pledged to their members that 12% is what they'll get, but things are getting a bit out of control now.

Schools are closed and those that are not, suffer from intimidation from striking teachers. The same applies to hospitals. Before the strike an agreement that essential staff will not strike was made, but alas. Intimidation rules and people are getting hurt and some 30 already died. Addington Hospital has lost 32 patients alone and hospital entrances are being blocked.

Whilst talking hospitals, another ugly one has reared it's head. Some of the best known medical facilities in South Africa is coming to a standstill through affirmative action policies. There are massive shortages of medical professionals in these institutions as there are not enough doctors and / or anesthetists. There are plenty of applicants but they're the wrong colour.

Hope to hell that you get a (qualified) black doctor at a government hospital otherwise kiss your life goodbye. And we wonder why so many people complain about medical aid tariffs?

Let's have your ideas -

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