The Roads Traffic Infringement Agency, which used Talk Radio 702 to trash The Star’s article about the imminent collapse of the Aarto fine system, has refused to answer specific questions on the matter.
Sherman Amos, deputy registrar of the RTIA, told listeners that the SA Post Office was to blame for the non-delivery of some courtesy/reminder letters.
He said the letters would be sent out at the beginning of June, including the backlog, and claimed that fines did not prescribe or become invalid after a time.
The Star asked how many letters were sent out in the months before and after the four-week strike, and how legislation that specifically spells out that notices have to be sent out within 40 days of the offence being committed will be by-passed.
Sherman did not reply to questions and instead invited The Star for an interview.
The Justice Project South Africa has backed The Star.
National chairman Howard Dembovsky said that after a voluminous report on the pilot implementation was presented to then transport minister S’bu Ndebele in September 2010, most of the issues raised in The Star’s report were already apparent.
The 2012 annual report showed a mere 14 percent of Aarto fines were paid, resulting in just 8.83 percent of the monetary value being realised.
The justice project had long been saying that the Aarto Act would work only if the systems behind it were properly implemented.
Transformation in the way in which traffic enforcement was practised was also key to its successful implementation. Since day one, this had not been the case, Dembovsky said,
Furthermore, from June 1, 2010 to December 21 2012 the Johannesburg metro police department had violated the act’s service requirements by sending out infringement notices by ordinary mail, effectively negating them.
“However, the fact that their infringement notices were invalid to start with did not deter them from setting up multiple, daily roadblocks to intimidate motorists into paying them.”
To date, all the unlawfully posted JMPD infringement notices remained live on the JMPD’s systems. - The Star