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New World with New Rules offers Opportunities for the RFA and its Members

With COVID-19 and lockdown, our world has changed forever. We have been catapulted into a “new normal”, a new world with new rules!

Challenges. Resilience. Fear. Uncertainty. Trepidation. Disgust. Re-Prioritisation.

These are some of the words I would use to describe the past few months – particularly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and Lockdown.

Yes, times have been extremely tough and challenging, but the resilience of the trucking industry has once again come to the fore. As we say at the RFA: “as long as trucks are around, South Africa will not stop!!”

The amount of work done by the RFA team and its members over recent months has been incredible. The volume of communication shared, the assistance and guidance given, all with the aim of helping operators, has been absolutely amazing to witness.

How people have shared information, to see what they can do to make things right and to make the best of a pretty bad situation: this is what makes the RFA unique.

Going forward we can expect the following:

  • Uncertainty: Many things are uncertain and there may be no clear answers in the short-term.  The effects of the recent massive changes on our industry, our people and our economy, will unravel over the coming months and years.
  • Trepidation: Many people are living in fear or anxiety about something that may or may not happen.
  • Disgust: We have seen many cases of people, including some Government officials, misusing the COVID-19 pandemic for their own, personal gain. Government is far from winning the war against corruption. This is something we need to expose. And fight against.
  • Re-prioritisation: With global disruption, our country’s priorities are changing. Everything is being re-prioritised. Things that could improve and assist our industry may well not be on Government’s priority list for now. Government’s focus is now predominantly dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic – and understandably so.

For the trucking industry however, there are still so many challenges in our industry that need to be resolved: high cube containers, e-tolls, AARTO, law enforcement, to mention but a few. All these elements are still hanging in the air. The effects of the delays in getting answers to our questions are unknown.

I don’t believe many of these issues will be resolved in the short-term. But we cannot lose sight of these.

We now have two new priorities: –

  • Violence and attacks on truck drivers: the safety of our industry and the people in our industry remains paramount. We need to be concerned about this. Desperate people take desperate action. The RFA needs to play a role in addressing this, by sharing information and facilitating training. There is a lot that we can do.
  • Providing members with even better services and benefits: The Association offers many benefits, but we need to expand on these. We are busy with several innovative initiatives that we will be rolling out over the coming months.

Our new world with new rules may be somewhat daunting at times, but it does offer us exciting opportunities: to learn and discover better ways of doing business. The RFA is the perfect vehicle through which we can all benefit.

The RFA cannot give us work, but it does enable us to do our work better –  a lot better. And if we can do our work better, the more work we will get. Could there be any better reason for being a member?

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POPI ACT

Dear RFA Member,

  1. The personal information which is processed by The Road Freight Association (“RFA”) in the course of your membership and your engagement of the RFA’s services fall within the ambit of the POPI Act.
  2. The purpose of this document is to obtain your consent to process your personal information.
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  4. You also confirm that you understand that by failing and/or refusing to provide consent to the RFA, that the RFA will not be able to fulfil its obligations towards you or continue with the membership and service relationship, depending on the nature of the information to which you object, unless you grant your consent to process your personal information.
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        Note: The member is to take note that certain demographic information is referred to as special personal information in terms of Section 26 of the POPI Act. There is a difference between personal information and special personal information. The RFA therefore processes both general and special personal information of its clients.

  1. Your personal information will only be processed for the purpose for which it was collected, and as agreed (“the services”), which includes, but is not limited to, the following:
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