We leant our car to Sam, a visiting FAO consultant, for the weekend and he was stopped by police. They probably recognised that he wasn’t the usual driver, because even at the official checks, they wave me through and only ever ask Marie for her license – probably just so they can talk to her for a minute.
This time, they actually asked him whose car it was and he told them. But we never transferred ownership officially so the registration is in the name of a local monk. The police probably had a good laugh asking Sam if this monk was one of his expat friends. It might have stopped there, but flicking through the blue book, they realised that registration had expired in May.
I had to go to the Roads Safety & Transport Authority yesterday to get the registration renewed. There was a sign saying that the late fee was 50 Nu per day, which comes to a lot, so I was sent in to the RTO. I told him that I’d done the fitness check and the emissions test, got insurance but no one had told me that I needed to renew the registration. He seemed to take this for a good opportunity and told me that it was 100 Nu per day, coming to a total of 15,900 Nu. The annual registration fee is only 1500 Nu.
This isn’t a fine. It’s a ransom. But I held my tongue until he told me to write a letter explaining the situation and they’d think about it. And every day, the fee goes up.
Hey Murray, how much does it cost to get a new registration? It may well work out cheaper for you, assuming the letter doesn’t work.
I don’t think it’s possible without bringing the monk down from his monastery, but I’ll ask.