adminTemba Dube Senior Reporter
THE Bulawayo city Council will soon conduct a door-to-door debt-collection exercise to account for about 16,000 traffic tickets worth more than $240,000.The exercise follows a three-day blitz on vehicles that the local authority carried out with the police and the Vehicle Inspection Department (VID) between Monday and Wednesday last week.
Motorists are ticketed for illegal parking, use of illegal termini, and flouting of other traffic laws. Traffic tickets have been accumulating since dollarisation in 2009, with some individual motorists accruing up to $600 in unpaid fines. Fines vary from $5 to $36.
Nesisa Mpofu, the council’s senior public relations officer, said tighter new by-laws will see public transporters who continued using illegal points to pick and drop passengers losing their licences.
“The security and traffic section of the council together with ZRP (Zimbabwe Republic Police) will soon have a door-to-door exercise targeting defaulters,” Mpofu told Chronicle.
“Kombi operators who are obscuring their number plates in a bid to avoid tickets will be accounted for and perpetrators taken to court. Those operating at illegal pick up points will have their Operator’s Licenses revoked in terms of Chapter 29:15 of the Urban Councils Act.”
She said recent technological advancements by council would make the exercise possible. Council traffic officers are now able to check in an instant whether a vehicle has outstanding tickets by punching its number plates into a laptop linked to the local authority’s database.
She expressed concern over the high number of outstanding traffic tickets in the city.
“There are over 16,000 unpaid tickets worth over $240,000. Despite numerous reminders, motorists continue to neglect paying,” Mpofu said.
“Spot checks were carried out on Monday up to Wednesday and will continue routinely. All motor vehicles with outstanding fines were clamped and towed to the storage yard. Those found not road-worthy were taken to ZRP Traffic Central (Drill Hall) and then later to VID.
A total of 40 commuter omnibuses (Kombis) with tickets of loading at undesignated places were accounted for and with part of the fines having been paid are still in the impound yard.”
A total of 119 vehicles were impounded in the blitz with some taken to the VID workshop and others to Drill Hall Police Station.
Some motorists complained that the system for recovering their vehicles once they got clamped by council was unclear and open to abuse by council officials.
Mpofu said: “The procedure of recovering a clamped vehicle is to pay at the Municipal Revenue Hall the fine in full and the vehicle will be released.
“If it has been impounded to the storage yard, one needs to pay the tow away fee which is $50, storage fees which are $17.25 for small vehicles, $30 for medium size vehicles and $35 for heavy vehicles, charged per day together with the fine.”
She said vehicle registration books were a pre-requisite together with Operator’s Licenses and Route Authority for those in the transportation of the public.
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