Cash Cows

I don’t usually carry a lot of cash around. For one, it’s a security risk and two, it’s the 21st century – everyone is transacting online or with plastic. So needless to say I was quite incensed when I went to renew my driver’s licence on Monday only to find out that this government office operates as a “cash only” business. 

Luckily this time, I had enough cash on me to cover the cost of the licence but a couple of people ahead of me were decidedly upset at being told they would have to go out, find an ATM and draw out the cash and bring it back and join the queue in order to complete the process. 

Of course the unhelpful, dare I say, surly woman behind the glass had no answer for me when I asked why they didn’t have card machines. And no amount of cajoling from me could get her to give me the clarity I wanted. I have since discovered that Home Affairs, the electricity department and pretty much every government department functions in the very same vein.

So I called around yesterday to try and get some clarity on why this is like it is, and in true government style, I got no closer to any kind of reasonable explanation for this payment policy. Initially, my journalist instinct kicked in and I thought I had unearthed a great story of how a bunch of cashiers were accepting cash only transactions so that they could steal money. But it turns out that this is in fact the way our government does business. 

I took to social media with my irritation and I got a slew of similar stories; people complaining of the inconvenience this is causing. One listener told me she went to apply for a new passport and because she didn’t have a copy of her identity document with her, she was charged double. But she only got a receipt for one payment. And the stories of people’s experiences continue to arrive in my inbox. 

The government are continuously making these grandiose claims that they are stamping out fraud and corruption in the various departments and the Minister of Home Affairs even vowed to shake up this department so that there would be better service delivery and a clean operation. 

They’ve also invested huge amounts of money in infrastructure and technology, which is obviously there, but they’re not using it. The whole home affairs department is meant to be this technologically advanced business with the new ID cards, which is meant to be a more secure system and so on, but where are the card payment machines? 

It’s the same as having a state of the art crime lab and no skills to run it; expect you don’t have to have any kind of skill to swipe a credit or debit card; any counter hand can do it; restaurants and other outlets do it all the time. 

It’s 2015, and in this day and age we have a push towards e-government, e-learning and e-everyting, you can’t tell me that it’s a stretch to expect people to be able to go into a municipal or government office and make a payment electronically either using an internationally accepted form of payment like using a credit or debit card or even do it online or through an app.

So what people are doing now is: they are forced to carry in wads of cash and this makes them a target to thieves and robbers. This archaic form of doing business should be eliminated. And not only is it a security risk for the consumer, it’s also a huge security risk for the municipality or the government department dealing with all this cash.  

And what are they doing with all this cash? The fact that they are “cash only” means that they have to employ a Cash in Transit Company to collect the money, take it to a bank and deposit it. Why not do it electronically like the rest of the modern world? Eliminate the risk. I mean, how much cash are they turning over in government departments? They are opening themselves up to a possible cash in transit heist. 

Sure, perhaps they don’t accept the responsibility because the Cash in Transit Company takes all the risk, but you can easily obviate that risk. Any ordinary ATM card is now a debit card. No cash necessary. So what’s the bigger picture here? Are these companies scoring from moving around cash from the different government departments? Maybe someone has a contract or tender to do it and I’d like to know if it would put them out of business if all government departments went with electronic payments? 

And what about the tax implications of a cash only business? Surely this is also critical. I’d like to know if SARS has ever looked into these municipal and government departments. 

The other day I ordered a pizza and the delivery guy arrived at my home with a mobile credit card machine. If one can do this with pizza, can a government department not employ this kind of technology?

At the end of this day I admit I have no evidence to back up my theory of them being open to fraud and corruption, but I’ve become quite cynical about government and the way it operates for reasons that I don’t even need to mention; we all know what those reasons are...

So when I’m confronted by a situation like this one where I’m compelled to pay cash over to a government official with no rational or justifiable reason, one has to wonder what is happening to that cash. Where is it going? Is this opening up opportunities for corruption or theft? The public has a right to know!    

You can email Terence Pillay at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter: @terencepillay1 and tweet him your thoughts.