Legal aspects around the Professional Driver Exchange on the Driver Information Bureau

The legal issues surrounding this database need to be handled correctly. In South Africa the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPI) governs such a service. Breeches of POPI carry a maximum of an R 10 million fine and or a 10 year prison term.

POPI has been taken as the Benchmark upon which the service is based as South African labor and information Law is seen as generally progressive and protective of workers and rights.

In order to guide DIB we employed the Services of two lawyers namely Michaelsons who have provided a guide to POPI and Dr Hugo Pienaar of Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr (see a second letter from Dr Pienaar) who is widely known in the industry at a very senior level in the field of labor law, who provided two documents. Also Christ Lee and Associates have provided input and Leslie Smith Attorneys have given oversight of all the agreements.

A wide range of interpretations were received but the system has been designed to take care of the most conservative of these:

A Driver’s permission must be gained before DIB can upload and process his personal information.

No personal information is transferred to DIB from Transport Operators or Data partners before the driver’s permission  has been attained.

EMPLOYED DROVERS: With regards to all information attained from on employed drivers, Transport operators need to warrant to DIB that they have the Drivers permission. How they attain that permission is up to them.

UNEMPLOYED DRIVERS:  When it comes to the provision of  information of  like Driver references of drivers who have left  there is some choice on how the transport operator engages with DIB.

If permission to supply Driver references to DIB has not been attained the Transport Operator has the option to save what is his own data on www.rootstorage.com ( a third party storage system separate from DIB ). When the unemployed driver gives permission to a perspective employer to have his information, DIB uploads, processes and releases the information in a single step. In Dr Pienaar’s interpretation of POPI he is uncomfortable, Michaelsons are comfortable as are DIB but the decision how to interact with DIB remains the Transport Operators.

 

Driver’s permission must be gained before distributing a drivers information

Before DIB releases any Drivers information to a party requesting information we also need the driver’s permission.

For employed drivers this is not a problem as the permission to release the information is attained at the same time that he information to upload and process was attained.

Where driver has arrive at a Transport Operator’s site ( looking for a job ) the Transport operator will need to warrant that  the waiver has been signed and needs to keep a copy of the Waiver which DIB will audit on a random basis.

The following agreements make up the package.

Booking form for Transporters.

DIB-Transporter agreement.

Driver Permission form ( Waiver )

 

 

Andrew Crickmay

8 March 2016