Hundreds of thousands of motorists may be blacklisted

Press Digest by Kong See Hoh

PETALING JAYA (Feb 20, 2011): IT looks likely that hundreds of thousands of motorists are going to be blacklisted when the deadline for them to settle their traffic summonses expires at the end of the month.

According to a report in Sin Chew Daily today, traffic police, Road Transport Department (RTD) and Kuala Lumpur City Hall issued a total of 20,964,361 traffic summonses from 2000 to 2009, but as of Feb 3, only about 13% of the tickets were settled.

In other words, more than 80% of the motorists issued with summonses have not settled them.

This also means that when the grace for them to settle outstanding summonses expires on Feb 28, hundreds of thousands of motorists with some 18 million outstanding summonses will be blacklisted. Many of the errant motorists are holding more than one ticket.

Although RTD director-general Datuk Solah Mat Hassan has said that the government will not extend the grace for motorists to settle their summonses and urged them to pay up as soon as possible, statistics made available to the press shows that only 13.43% of the summonses issued by traffic police, RTD and City Hall’s traffic section between 2000 and 2009 had been settled as at Feb 3.

Statistics provided by RTD shows that from May last year to Feb 3, the three enforcement agencies collected a total of RM371,481,637 in compound fines from 2,814,989 traffic offenders.

In view of the poor response, the government has repeatedly called on the public to settle their traffic summonses.

Those who pay up before the Feb 28 deadline will not be blacklisted or liable under the Motor Vehicles (Demerit Points) Penalty System.

Under the amended Road Transport Act, those who are blacklisted will be prevented:
>> from renewing their road tax, driving licence and motor insurance coverage;

>> conducting any transaction related to Road Transport Department, including registering new cars or second-hand vehicles; and

>>transferring ownership of their vehicles.

Motorists have largely ignored summonses issued by the City Hall as statistics showed that only 3.19% of such summonses, or 63,871 tickets totaling RM3,202,491, have been settled from May last year to Feb 3.

The report said summonses issued by the traffic police were given the most attention, with 14.61% or RM357,156,598 compound fines from 2,669,495 summonses settled in the same period.

For the same period, RTD collected RM11,122,548 (81,623 summonses), or 11.78% of the total summonses it issued.

For the 10-year period from 2000, traffic police collected compound fines totalling RM3,229,505,651 (18,269,413 tickets); RTD collected RM103,920,450 (692,803 tickets); and City Hall raked in RM200,214,500 (2,002,145 summonses).
>> Don't overlap, Hua Zong tells affliliates
HUA Zong (Federation of Chinese Associations of Malaysia) has criticised the move by four of its affiliates to jointly pursue the “20-Year Plan of Action for Malaysia”outside the umbrella body, the Chinese press reported on Saturday.

It said that all Chinese assembly/town halls should respect the umbrella body’s central committee decision to carry out the plan as a central effort. Any overlap, duplication or over-emphasis in drawing the line by any quarters in implementing the plan would only result in unnecessary confusion, it said.

In a press statement on Friday, Hua Zong said the recent announcement by Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, Negri Sembilan and Johor Chinese Assembly Halls and Penang Town Halls that they had set up a 20-Year Plan of Action for Malaysia pro tem committee left much room for negotiation.

The 20-Year Plan of Action for Malaysia, an ambitious project by Hua Zong, aims to gather civil society views and suggestions on major national issues on social, environmental, cultural, educational, economic and political perspectives.

When completed, the plan was to publish and distribute the report to government and private agencies.

Late last year, Hua Zong dissolved the plan’s secretariat, which was then headed by Kuala Lumpur and Selangor Chinese Assembly Hall president Tan Yew Sing, and set up various sub-committees to carry out the agendas of the plan.

In the Friday statement, Hua Zong said the decision reached by the central committee at the Dec 16, 2010 extraordinary general meeting (to stick to its decision to dissolve the secretariat) should be respected by all parties concerned to avoid creating confusion among Chinese assembly/town halls.

It said Hua Zong has set up a committee to study and amend the 20-Year Plan of Action for Malaysia draft report.

Once the draft report is approved by the central committee, it will be published in both Chinese and English, and the recommendations made will be carried out according to the levels of their urgency, said the statement.

It said the recommendations will be carried out by the various sub-committees set up as well as the various Chinese assembly/town halls.

Meanwhile, Tan said the four Chinese assembly/town halls respected the decision of the central committee but it did not mean they could not continue with their efforts to pursue the plan.

Afterall, the various Chinese assembly/town halls are individually registered organisations and can carry on with the project on their own, he said, adding that no one should be pointing fingers.

“What we want is a stage to carry out the project. As the four Chinese assembly/town halls have put in a lot of efforts, we hope to carry on with it.” -- theSun