Government's pilot traffic infringement project has been shown to be a failure and in a state of terminal collapse.
This is according to the Department of Transport's internal documents, which were this morning leaked to the media by the Democratic Alliance (DA).
The reports on the pilot of the Administrative Adjudication of Road Offences (Aarto) Act show low levels of payment by law-breakers and failure by the enforcement agency to follow the law.
They also call for doubling the fines to alleviate the financial congestion.
Players believe the failure of Aarto predicts the controversial e-toll system will suffer the same fate.
"If the current obstacles experienced with Tshwane, the City of Johannesburg, the RTIA [Road Traffic Infringement Agency] and the TRMC [Road Traffic Management Corporation] are an indication of how the rollout will take place, the national rollout is doomed to failure before it has started," says one of the reports.
It says the national deployment plan is dependent on several issues being resolved, including the sending of enforcement and courtesy letters.
Dying
Mmusi Maimane, the DA's national spokesperson, says in a statement that the documents show neither Johannesburg nor Tshwane are ready to fully implement Aarto, and the payment rate on infringement notices has dropped below 5%.
Maimane says the documents also worryingly show "traffic law enforcement on roads in our big cities in Gauteng is on the brink of collapse".
Ian Ollis, the DA's shadow minister of transport, says the Aarto pilot project has been an "abysmal failure. Aarto is in a state of terminal collapse."
Maimane points out that fines under Aarto, piloting since 2008, are sent out using data on the polluted Electronic National Traffic Information System (eNatis), which will also be used by the South African National Roads Agency (Sanral) to send out e-toll invoices.
"These revelations indicate clearly that the means to collect and enforce fines in Gauteng simply does not exist, and that implementation of e-tolls is, therefore, doomed to fail," says Maimane.
Not ready
Aarto has been in the pipeline for several years and has been running pilot projects in Johannesburg and Tshwane. These projects were "completed" on 1 April 2010, according to the leaked status report.
The department has yet to finalise a national rollout date, but the 26 July status update says this must be done soon. Ollis says any national deployment will be a failure.
However, the status report says: "Due to a lack of practical knowledge of the implementation process, it is evident that the role-players do not have full insight into the practical implementation and are short-sightedly looking at hardware issues only. It is, therefore, clear that the role-players are not really in a state of readiness to implement Aarto."
No money
The Working Group Report shows that, in 2011/12, 89.54% of required payments were unpaid by road users, a number that was 87.56% in the 2012/13 year. Over those two years, a total amount of R2 billion is still outstanding.
The sending of courtesy letters, a vital step in proceeding with collection of unpaid fines, was suspended last July due to a lack of funds. Only 0.58% of all required enforcement orders were distributed in 2011/12 and 2.4% in the following year.
Because the RTIA is not complying with the administrative prescription of sending courtesy letters and enforcement orders, all infringement notices are "legally null and void", the documents say. National rollout cannot be considered unless the RTIA is financially sustained, says the status report.
The report proposes solutions such as funding RTIA from the fiscus, so that it can start sending courtesy letters and enforcement orders at a cost of R40 million a month to clear the backlog. It also says eNatis must "block transactions" to force offenders to pay up.
The eNatis system includes registers of motor vehicles, motor trade numbers, temporary and special permits, as well as driving licences and professional driving permits. The Department of Transport awarded the eNatis contract to Tasima, which developed and still operates the system, in December 2001.
Some 15 databases from the previous system were migrated into one national database under the project. However, the information, which will also be used to send out bills for those travelling on e-toll roads without e-tags, has been criticised as being heavily polluted.
Other solutions in the leaked documents include the need for long-term solutions to address the high cost of sending fines by registered mail and that budget projections must be addressed. The status report also says the "current 2008 regulations may be amended insofar as such amendments are allowed for under the current Act".
These amendments may include "increasing the penalty unit value from the current R50 to R100," which would increase the average value of infringements from R500 to R1 000. Ollis says the proposal would amount to a doubling of the fines, a step the RTIA has denied.
"As far as the RTIA is aware, the minister has not made any policy determination regarding the increment and/or doubling of traffic fines. As indicated, the RTIA is not responsible for policy matters, but implementation," the agency has said.
However, the status report says the proposed amendment could be sorted out in a short space of time and gazetted for implementation. "This will result in a higher income for the issuing authorities, as well as the agency."
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