Cape Town - The issuing and processing of traffic fines that end up at the Wynberg and Goodwood municipal courts is being scrutinised by city authorities after it emerged that more than half the traffic cases set down for December 2014 were struck off the roll.
Of the 6347 traffic cases enrolled at the Wynberg court at the end of last year, 2982 were struck off the roll. At the Goodwood court, 2624out of 3303 traffic cases were struck off.
Compared with other courts, such as Cape Town where only 23 of the more than 10 000 traffic cases were struck off the roll, the statistics for Wynberg and Goodwood were “alarming”, said JP Smith, mayco member for Safety and Security.
“We need to get more information about this because it is a critical part of the traffic prosecuting process.”
The information formed part of the quarterly report on the functioning of the municipal courts that was presented to the city’s safety and security portfolio committee meeting last week.
Committee chairwoman Carin Brynard was dismayed by the discrepancies in the statistics for Wynberg and Goodwood, compared with other areas.
“Why is this not happening in other courts?”
Marius Basson, of compliance and auxiliary services, attributed the spike in December to confusion about court dates being set for public holidays. He said traffic officers had mistakenly listed court dates that coincided with the public holidays.
But deputy traffic chief André Nel said officers were given a list of dates and that these would not include public holidays.
DISCREPANCIES
Brynhard pointed out that Wynberg and Goodwood also showed a high incidence of cases being struck off the roll in October last year, compared with other courts.
The error during October was with the service provider, Syntell, said Basson. He said cases were struck off the roll if there were any discrepancies with the fine or with the offender’s details. While many cases are struck off because of officer error, cases would also be dropped because the magistrate could not deal with the volume of cases. There was a “cap” on the number of cases that could be heard each day.
But Brynhard was unhappy with the explanation that the city’s traffic officers were simply getting it wrong.
“We can’t keep blaming our officers. We need to understand what is happening here. If our officers need training, we need to know that.”
Smith referred to warrants for transgressions in the bus lane that had not been signed off by the court, as an example.
“That’s why we are negotiating with the Justice Department to get additional magistrates. There are also huge numbers of warrants going stale because the magistrates are not getting to them.”
Smith said a former magistrate, now employed by the city, would “delve into these matters to improve the quality and look for institutional weaknesses” in the courts.
Western Cape Regional Head of the Department of Justice, Hishaam Mohamed, said the city had not communicated with the department regarding the matters being struck from the court roll. However, the department would look into the specific reasons why the cases were removed on Monday.
Cape Argus