Kerala to collect traffic fines from June 5
KOCHI:ATER obtaining a clean chit from the Directorate of Industries and Commerce regarding grat allegations raised by the opposition in connection with the Artificial Intelligence (AI) camera transaction deal, state government has decided to start collecting fines for traffic violations flagged by AI cameras from June 5.
A fine will be charged on an average 200, 000 violations detected every day. Transport department has already asked Keltron (Kerala State Electronics Development Corporation) to depute more staff at the control rooms for facilitating the operations. The decision to start collecting fines from June 5 as per schedule was taken ater transport commissioner S Sreejith informed Minister for Transport Antony Raju about the department’s preparedness to collect fines.
According to official sources, violations detected on a daily basis will be notified within seven days. At present, around 250,000 violations are caught on camera every day.
Once the department starts to collect fines, it will have to send notices to at least 200,000 persons every day. At present, Keltron has appointed 146 employees to send notices.
The number of notices sent is restricted to a maximum of 25,000 per day. Transport department has asked for at least 500 additional employees to scale up the number of notices.
The higher number of employees is also likely to increase the cost of the project.
Keltron has stated that the cost of sending a notice is higher than estimated.
Under the Safe Kerala project, 726 surveillance cameras powered by AI have been installed in the state to prevent traffic violations and reduce road accidents. Minister for Industries P Rajeeve had on Friday rubbished the alleged corruption in the installation of AI cameras as part of the Safe Kerala project while citing a report filed by the principal secretary of industries department.
“State-run Keltron’s tender process for the Safe Kerala project was completely transparent and all due procedures were followed. All concerned documents are in the public domain as those were uploaded in the e-portal from then itself,” the minister told media persons.