The Maintenance Amendment Act 9 of 2015 was signed into law in 2018, which allowed the department to further regulate, investigate and punish maintenance defaulters in the country. One of the key penalties that could be imposed on these individuals was to have them blacklisted by credit bureaus.
As a result, the government has been unable to actually blacklist defaulters as was intended, leaving this aspect of the laws effectively neutered for the last four years. “There is a gap in the current legislation which prevents the implementation of section 11 of Act No. 9 of 2015 as it does not create a correlative responsibility for the credit bureaus to receive the default orders from the Maintenance Clerks and Maintenance Officers.
Lamola said that there is an urgent need to correct this provision, and his department has requested the legislative development branch to include the amendment of the Act to create this corresponding obligation to enable the credit bureaus to receive the orders and act accordingly.