Phumelela/RA prejudice owners

In the RA letter/express which many are lauding there is a disturbing attachment/memorandum where Phumelela warns all trainers in Phumelela regions that failure to pay outstanding stable rentals by Friday 2nd January 2009, their nominations/entries will be declined.

The RA then encourages RA members/owners to pay their monthly training accounts timeously so that their horses wont be prejudiced.

As a RA member and more specifically as an owner who pays timeously (which i believe most are), i take exception to this and challenge the legality of it.

The trainer acts as the agent for the owner. The owner invests money in the industry and allows (hoodwinked) Phumelela to use our intellectual property free of charge.

Legally i dont believe Phumelela can prejudice your/our livelihood/occupation in this fashion and will seek legal opinion thereto (maybe TS or another can enlighten us?).

As for the RA, the first thing they do is encourage owners ( i believe the vast majority do) to pay timeously (insulting?).

What the RA, who are supposed to look after the owners/members interest (and racing in general), should have done imo is to investigate if what Phumelela is trying to do is legal.
I respectfully believe Phumelela's actions are not lawful.
If that is the case the RA should be taking the operator on and confronting them while serving its mandate (just as they should have when P proposed the selling of our racetracks for instance).

This is a dangerous precedent and must be questioned and resisted by all racing stakeholders.

The rules are quite clear that owners and their authorised agents are authorised to nominate. As a licenced racing operator P are bound to abide by the rules, regardless of their own operators rules, to which they refer in their letter to the trainers.

While the RA should be challenging this the real power to stop it lies with the NHRA as refusal to accept a nom from an owner, delivered by his validly appointed agent with authority to act is contrary to the terms under which tehy have been licenced.