LTA, Police Highlight on Penalties and Safety on Roads

Director of Traffic, Senior Superintendent of Police Mahesh Mishra highlighted that the main objective of the Fiji Police Force and the Land Transport Authority (LTA) was the safety of all road users.

SSP Mishra highlighted this during a press conference at the Nabua Police Station in Nabua, Suva yesterday with LTA chief executive Carmine Piantedosi.

“We need to change the mind set of our people to bring safety first before they commit offences. Before they do something on our roads, they need to respect the rule of law; they need to respect other road users,” SSP Mishra said.

Mr Piantedosi said one way of addressing road safety was through educating the road users and having training and education programmes on road safety annually or repeated overtime.

He also talked about people who complain about being issued infringement notices.

“When they complain about receiving an infringement notice, they are angry with themselves.

“The other part of the complaint could be about service which is separate from the infringement notice.

“When people complain about the service, that is a different issue. Complaints about service could be the way they received the infringement notice, the way they were treated or offended as a person, which is also important. “We need to make sure that we deal with them fairly and justly. But the infringement notices itself, the penalty they receive; they are upset about that because they got caught, not because we have done something wrong,” Mr Piantedosi said.