Traffic ticket system being cleaned
GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS are now trying to sanitise the Traffic Ticket Management System (TTMS) to facilitate the passage of the new Road Traffic Act, which is expected to help modify the behaviour of motorists once it comes into effect.
Acting director of projects at the Ministry of Transport and Mining, Joan Wynter, said that amid prevailing concerns, a consultant at the Ministry of National Security is currently working with others to clean up the system
Currently, the Ministry of National Security has responsibility for the ticketing system, and the police have responsibility for writing tickets and for inputting the ticket information so that Tax Administration Jamaica (TAJ) can collect from offending motorists.
“That is not happening in its fullest sense,” Wynter admitted to editors and reporters during a Gleaner Editors’ Forum last Thursday.
“So you have a ticket and the expiry date passes and it is still not at TAJ, so you would go to TAJ and TAJ would, in their good effort, collect the money …. because I don’t think they are in the business of having you there standing with your money and don’t take it … so they are going to help you by putting your information on the system.
“Now, there are a lot of transposing errors. By that I mean, transferring information from the yellow piece that you present at TAJ, which, oftentimes, you can hardly see the words,” she said.
Wynter said that incorrect information is frequently inputted, triggering a failed payment.
The justice ministry revealed during the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee sitting in January that there are concerns regarding the accuracy of the updates made to the TTMS, and this was the reason for nearly 90 per cent of the more than 65,000 persons who were issued traffic tickets by the police in the first half of last year not facing any consequences.
“So the court would issue a warrant on the 40th day for you to be brought in, because you have not paid or you have paid, but because the information is incorrect, it is not transmitted properly, so you are out there as ‘not paid’, so there is that problem with that system,” Wynter explained.
“The new Road Traffic Act has new information; it has extensive fines and it has new ways of doing things,” she said, adding that “the major objective of the new Road Traffic Act is to modify behaviour”.