Traffic fine collection hits snag
THE KWAZULU-NATAL Department of Transport has been losing revenue due to uncollected traffic fines after a newly installed system crashed.
A senior officer in Durban said all traffic fines which were captured on the Trafman software were lost when data was not imported by a new system installed by Syntell (Pty) Ltd, Opus.
He said these were serious strategic issues that required the attention of the top management. But the chief director and senior managers had been busy with operational issues instead of fixing the system. He said the procurement of the new Opus system had been a total waste of taxpayers’ money because it had become a “white elephant”.
“Traffic fines are not processed and officers cannot issue traffic fines because the new system is dysfunctional.
Traffic officers sleep in the cars because they cannot issue fines. They only collect useless statistics on how many people they have stopped. Warrant of arrests are no longer executed. Despite countless meetings held by station commanders and regional managers, the top officials have no answers,” he said.
Another officer confirmed the system was faulty. She said the snag opened a floodgate of corruption and bribes from officers. She said this was the second year of no funds collection.
“The executive managers have collapsed the system. We get paid for doing nothing, others take bribes from motorists. But other motorists refuse to pay bribes because they are aware that we are a toothless law enforcement agency,” he said.
A third officer said data recorded by speed timing cameras on the highways could not be loaded onto the system. She complained that management was busy with trivial cases instead of addressing the software problem.
“The department is dying a slow death with station commanders on sick leave and others placed on more than a year’s suspension while getting paid full salaries,” she said.
Hein du Toit, general manager for Road Safety and ecommerce at Syntell acknowledged questions sent, but said he could not discuss client-related matters with the media.
He said he had provided a response to the department’s spokesperson Kwanele Ncalane.
By the time of publication, we had not managed to get a comment from the KZN Department of Transport.