April is a wonderful time if you work for someone else - and a terrible time if you work for yourself!  I am glad it is over, it wrecks havoc and one wishes holidays could be spread over the year and not all concentrated in one month. 

Its finally back to work, and no more staff taking long weekends - and thats something to celebrate more than a holiday!  The one thing that is also frsutarting is trial allocation at various courts.  You can get alsmost no days at all for April and then 5 or 6 on the same day, and one after another, in later months.  I am sure there must be a way to more consistently allocate dates - or maybe I am just having bad luck?

Dentists getting carried away it seems - as a report in the Mercury confirms:

Durban dentists fingered for fraud

Fri, 26 May 2006

More than 40 dentists, dental technicians and doctors in Durban could face criminal charges for defrauding the state and patients, The Mercury reported on Friday.

Its website said various scams had been laid bare by two government investigations into the operations of dental laboratories and the Road Accident Fund.

On Thursday, the SA Dental Technicians' Council, which regulates the industry, charged technicians in Durban and pursued criminal charges against 44 dental surgeries.

You can read the full article here: http://iafrica.com/news/sa/429133.htm

The Regulations are up on our site at:
http://www.jaa.org.za/docs/GG_20060529_28886.pdf

http://www.jaa.org.za/docs/050907b64b-03.pdf 

Here is an extract from the Transport Minister's Budget speech on Monday:

As far as compensation for road injuries goes the combination of new blood at the Road Accident Fund (RAF) the implementation of the changes that parliament recently approved the public discussion of the draft regulations published yesterday and their adoption either in current or amended form shortly should go some way towards bringing sense and sensibility to the system.

Incidentally I have requested the DOT and Special Investigation Unit to prepare a detailed presentation sometime soon on the ongoing investigation into drivers licence fraud. Let me just say that things are not as chaotic as some would have us believe but watch this space!