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Auxilia Katongomara, Chronicle Reporter
POLICE have sent 500 electronic traffic gadgets to stations countrywide in a move meant to do away with spot fines and fight corruption.
The gadgets will detect offences and issue out invoices to be paid later at the police station in a move which is likely to be welcomed by motorists who have complained of abuse at the hands of some police officers at roadblocks.
Home Affairs Deputy Minister Cde Obedingwa Mguni, who last week indicated that police would do away with receipt books, said the gadgets have already been dispatched to traffic stations.
“Presently 500 gadgets which will actually raise the invoices have been deployed into the country and into traffic stations. From now on we will never see a manually written invoice because that was giving us a problem.
“Also, we are eradicating corruption where that machine must detect the system, the offence and actually eject an invoice which is corresponding with the offence, not from a human error or a human’s mind. This is where we are shifting now,” said Cde Mguni while responding to questions in Parliament on Wednesday.
He said for the new system to be effective, there was a need to ensure that vehicle registration and owners’ details are up to date.
“Number one, remember I mentioned here that the registration of our vehicles in Zimbabwe needs to be integrated and computerised. Most of the people that are stopped at road blocks for fines, you will find that the driver does not have a licence; the car he is driving is not his and the owner is not known.
“If you let that person to go and pay at a police station, how will he pay? He is not known. The address and vehicle do not correspond. You cannot be always doing what he wants. We need to enforce the law and see that the person pays,” said Cde Mguni.
Warren Park MP Elias Mudzuri (MDC-T) asked Cde Mguni why police were not adhering to court judgments that the police should always have a Form 265 and not force people to pay spot fines.
Deputy Minister Mguni said the police had a right to contest court judgments if they hamper their operations.
“If there is a system that the court says we must not do, we have also the right to go and oppose that system. Why – because we have got reasons why we want to use a system that will maintain POSA in this country.
“At the moment, we opposed that because we want to use a system which will control vehicles. We cannot just allow anything that is intruding on our security to be implemented. We have to balance it for the country,” he said.
@AuxiliaK
Online Reporter