The Johannesburg Metro Police Department will continue spending R8 million a month on posting about 400 000 traffic fines - money it will not see back in the foreseeable future.
The Road Traffic Infringement Agency admitted this week that it does not have the budget to send courtesy letters by registered mail, as required by law.
The cost of registered mail is R20 a notice, and it is estimated by the JMPD that only 10 percent of motorists collect their notices from the post office and/or pay the fines.
The Star broke the story that millions of fines had been rendered invalid because courtesy letters were not sent - but the RTIA insisted it hadn’t sent the letters because of a post office strike.
The agency’s deputy registrar, Sherman Amos, promised the agency would send letters out from June 1.
Now, Amos’s spokeswoman Mthunzikazi Mbungwana, said the agency “expressed the unaffordability of sending registered notices”.
The agency is trying to pass a bill in Parliament to change the legislation to allow for electronic serving of infringement notices.
Asked what would happen to unpaid fines while legislation was being passed, the reply was that the RTIA was committed to “follow the prescripts of the law as soon as the challenges alluded to before have been addressed”.
The agency would not say whether a fine that was served electronically would still require registered mail.
Asked about the effect this was having on the budgets of the City of Johannesburg and the City of Tshwane, which were issuing fines and not deriving the income, the agency replied that it was not in a position to comment on the financial impact the crisis was having on municipalities where the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences was being piloted. - The Star