Nearly 10 000 phones have been confiscated by the City of Cape Town since 2012 and this programme is about to be ramped up. Take note if you’re the multi-tasking kind of driver.
No cellphone use while driving will be further enforced after what was seemingly a successful campaign to clamp down on the dangerous habit.
It was reported that over 2600 confiscated phones have never been reclaimed and have reached their apparent sell-by date, which is the part I found confusing because the phones were never meant to be sold in the first place and only reclaimed, so how could they have reached a ‘sell-by date’? Anyway, considering that the reclaim fee was R1 140 it seems that it just wasn’t worth bothering about to some of the offenders, especially if it was like one of the phones pictured above.
The phones are due to be auctioned off over the next few weeks and I’m pretty sure you could wangle a sweet bargain on any one of those iPhones, Samsung phones and Blackberrys which are due to be flogged. On second thought, you probably shouldn’t buy a second-hand Blackberry. Be mindful that the city has admitted that it’s stepping into unknown territory when it has come to wiping data off the phones, even after the SIM removal process. A service provider will reportedly be contracted to help with this mundane and possibly interesting task. It has been stressed that no personal information will be compromised during this process, but don’t act surprised if you score a bargain on an iPhone and then accidentally come across some awkward selfies.
Regrettably, no details have been released about the auction yet, or as far as we are aware of.
Photography HSM Images
