The Hawks are apparently going to arrest a number of people in connection with fraudulent garnishee orders. The debt collection industry seems to be a very interesting one, with certain courts favoured by the industry as given order more easily than other courts and as we saw with the Marikana incident debts, and overextended creditors, can lead to tragedy as that was one of the underlying problems in that dispute, not only just the issue of salaries.

A Moneyweb investigation revealed that in one case the debt collecting firm had charged R20 000 all in, for the repayment of a R1 000 loan! There are far too many companies extending far too much credit, at very high interest rates, rather recklessly to too many consumers and that is already weighing down our economy. One then ends up with products where the name of the game is trying to work out on what day the money will be deposited by the employer into the employee’s account so the debit orders for the loans can all go off on exactly that day, because a day later there’s often no funds. Some companies have products that submit the same debit order to the bank day after day, for a number of days, until the money is paid in and it can be debited, because many employers as a result now pay the money in on different days.

To now hear that court documents in matters involving these orders can’t even be found at the courts where the orders were supposedly granted, puts a whole new twist onto the story and the National Credit Regulator or NCR for short, really needs to do a lot more to curb the indebtedness amongst the working population and rein in these companies that recklessly extend credit to people who cannot possibly afford one more loan on top of all the debts they already have.