BRONWYNNE JOOSTE
Metro Writer
CAPE Town traffic officers are to start visiting offenders’ homes and offices to collect unpaid fines – and to arrest those who have warrants of arrest against their names and cannot pay what they owe.
Almost half a million of the city’s drivers have warrants of arrest for unpaid traffic fines. Collectively they owe just more than R200 million.
That figure is only about a third of the unpaid fines that traffic officials are battling to collect: they are sitting with more than 1.4 million fines to the the value of R592m.
Traffic Services chief inspector Merle Lourens said officers were planning a crackdown in the next few weeks. She urged motorists to pay their fines and check whether they had arrest warrants before the city-wide operations started next week.
A week-long roadblock on Cape Town’s busiest roads is planned and officers will also track offenders to their homes and workplaces to bring them to book, she said.
Lourens said 446 232 motorists had arrest warrants against their names because of unpaid fines worth R207m.
Earlier this month, Traffic Services issued 1 296 speeding fines in just one weekend. Between January and March, the city recorded an average of 20 000 speeding cases a week.
Not all the unpaid fines are for speeding, but cover a range of offences. Lourens said that in the next few weeks, the city would intensify Operation Reclaim, which was launched in 2007 to nab offenders with warrants at roadblocks.
Motorists who have outstanding fines, but no warrants, can pay their fines at roadblocks using instant payment machines.
In the past three months alone, 2 247 outstanding warrants were detected at roadblocks, Lourens said. The unpaid fines that led to these amounted to R2.6m.
Motorists caught with an outstanding warrant at a roadblock are arrested. During the week, they are taken to court. Over weekends offenders are booked in at the police station.
Lourens said some motorists had tried to evade capture at roadblocks. In these cases, automatic number plate recognition vehicles had swooped in. The number plate was detected and the motorist was taken to the traffic services bus, where their warrants were checked.
Scores of motorists had already been nabbed, Lourens said.
“We are planning a special roadblock that will last for the entire week, concentrating on major roads that lead into and out of town.”
Officers would also make house and business visits.
She urged motorists to settle their fines in the next week to avoid legal action.
“People are encouraged to pay their outstanding fines and to check whether they have warrants attached to their names and to sort these out before we hit the roads next week.”
Meanwhile, earlier this week, the national Department of Transport said it would continue operations during which fines were issued, drunk drivers were arrested and vehicles were checked.
Transport Minister S’bu Ndebele said that since the beginning of this year, 11 000 drivers countrywide had been arrested for drunken driving.
He said traffic authorities would be stepping up their patrols and were aiming to check one million vehicles each month.
Western Cape traffic spokesman Harold Williams said that between January and March, 510 motorists had been arrested for driving under the influence on the province’s roads.
The authorities were still compiling the figures for April.
Williams said that one of their main priorities was to target drunk driving. He explained that 50 percent of the accidents on the city’s roads were caused by alcohol. “We are going to increase our operations and tighten the screws on drunk drivers. We are very serious about eradicating this problem in the Western Cape.”
l To find out if you have outstanding traffic fines call 0860 034 637.