IMPORTANT LICENSE INFORMATION

Colin de Villiers ZS6COL has been making use of the time that the SARL office is closed to do extensive work on the SARL database, which in turn updates the online callbook. He had significant assistance in this exercise from Khutso at ICASA, who has been very prompt in providing data and attending to corrections and queries that have been required.

The updated database has been uploaded to the SARL website and all changes are now available using the SARL callbook lookup. Please note the following very important information:

Approximately 1,700 callsigns have been marked as “lapsed”. This is as a result of the substantial cleanup that ICASA undertook during the last year. This is a significant number of lapsed callsigns and many Amateurs have sometimes unwittingly allowed their licences to lapse. You may well be affected.

As an example there are 43 paid up members of the SARL who no longer have valid licences. Khutso wrote to these people several months ago and Colin has now written to them as well. The responses Colin has been receiving include:
Oh dear – I have not paid for several years. I have not been receiving an invoice.

Please note that ICASA does not send out reminder invoices. If you do not pay on receipt of the first invoice or if do not receive the first invoice – that’s it – you are lost forever and you will lose your licence. It is your responsibility to ensure that you are in possession of a current licence.
But I have paid. Well you may have paid, but if you did not receive a licence – you need to find out why. You need to send proof of payment to Khutso and he will investigate for you.

If there are 43 members of the SARL who were unaware that they had lost their licence, you can be sure that there are a great number of non members who have lost their licence. Maybe somebody you regularly talk to is now unlicensed.

You are therefore urged to do a callsign lookup of all the people you talk to in order to ensure that they are legal. Colin contacted the members of the SARL as a membership service – but the SARL cannot attempt to contact non members. Colin found an alarming number of people who do in fact have a licence – but the callsign on the SARL database is not the same as the callsign on the ICASA database. In some cases it is very obvious that the SARL callsign is the correct one.

"I have investigated these with Khutso and we have made many corrections. However there are many where there is insufficient evidence for Khutso to change his database and as such the ICASA database remains the official record", Colin said.

In these instances Colin changed the SARL database to match the ICASA database. If you are affected by this, you need to resolve the conflict with ICASA. In some instances a ZS has been changed back to a ZR and in some cases even back to a ZU. Other examples are where a ZS6 has been changed back to a ZS1, even though it appears that the person has moved to Division 6. There are a number of examples where a person has lapsed their callsign and somebody else has now taken that callsign. It may be that the person with the lapsed callsign has given up the hobby – in which case this is not a problem. However if such a person wants to reinstate their callsign, they are now going to need to choose a new callsign.

There are many people who have a duplicate callsign registered with the SARL. A large number of these duplicate callsigns have lapsed and have been removed from the database.

SO THE REQUEST IS: Please check the online callbook. Check your own callsign/s as well as any people you regularly talk to. If the callsign has lapsed you will get a message that says the callsign has lapsed. Please then resolve this with Khutso 011 566 3313 and make sure that you advise any correction to the SARL office. The office will require proof of any correction. No changes will be made to the SARL database without such proof, which ideally should be in the form of a copy of the licence.

Please note that the SARL is not in a position to resolve lapsed licenses on your behalf. Khutso will generally advise you of the outstanding arrears and he will request that you make the required payment to ICASA. Only once he receives your proof of payment will he reinstate your licence.

Please be aware that the offline callbook does not provide the facility of informing you of lapsed callsigns. You have to use the online callbook.

The SARL Council is very appreciative of Colin’s efforts. Thanks Colin.