Joburg traffic fine shock

Pretoria - These days fleet owners have to pay 50% more, instead of half price, for traffic fines issued in Johannesburg.

This comes after the Johannesburg Metro police (JMPD) on April 1 began applying a provision in the Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act (the Aarto system) that only comes into force later, together with the demerit system.

A businessman who regularly works with the JMPD and therefore wishes to remain anonymous, contacted Sake24 after attempting to pay a traffic fine for one of a certain company's vehicle drivers.

Aarto fines offer a 50% discount if paid within 32 days, but when he looked at the web-based payment system, www.payfine.co.za, the amount payable was R375 and not R125.

On enquiry he was told that the discount trebles if the company pays it rather than having the fine reissued to the driver concerned. The reissuing process is administratively demanding and companies often prefer to pay themselves and deal with it until the demerit system comes into operation.

Sake24 has seen correspondence with the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC), which administers the Aarto system, in which Alta Swanepoel, an Aarto consultant involved in drawing up the legislation, confirmed that the increased payment for companies only comes into force once the demerit system is in place.

The Aarto system is currently applicable only in Johannesburg and Pretoria, but on July 1 it comes into force in Ekurhuleni (Gauteng’s East Rand), eThekwini (Durban), Nelson Mandela Bay (Port Elizabeth) and Cape Town, but without the demerit system.

Tshwane is not applying the provision, unlike the JMPD.

According to a notice in the Government Gazette, the full system comes into operation countrywide on November 1.

- Sake24.com

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