Traffic fines come back to haunt Windhoekers

THE carefree attitude of Windhoek’s traffic offenders was thrown into the spotlight this past weekend when the Windhoek City Police started cracking down on those who don’t pay their fines.

The City Police currently has 28 000 arrest warrants dating back to 2007, all to be served on people who thought they had got away with violating traffic rules.This number is further broken down into 16 000 violations by private individuals and 12 000 by taxi drivers, City Police Chief Abraham Kanime said yesterday.With the computerisation of the Police’s record-keeping, traffic offenders can now easily be identified at roadblocks – this was proven during a three-hour roadblock campaign in Windhoek on Saturday.According to Kanime, about 130 people were screened over that period, and more than 50 arrest warrants issued.’One guy had as many as 11 warrants of arrest in his name,’ Kanime said.’Daily, our officers issue about 500 summonses, and these are mostly in the range of N$150 to N$300 offences,’ he says.The Police are finding it hard to prosecute all these cases, though.’We’ve been fighting for a special court designated to traffic offences, but up to now the answer has been that there aren’t enough magistrates,’ Kanime says.Kanime says another one of his fights is trying to get a points-deduction system in place that will help to suspend the driver’s licenses of repeat offenders.’If we can synchronise the system so we can have one court dedicated to traffic offences, have the Road Traffic Act amended to introduce a demerit system, and if we can then further transfer the management of taxis to the local authorities and revise our funding regime, can you imagine what the roads would look like then?’ he says.Taxis cause a particular headache for the Police chief.’Taxi licences currently are forever. Even if the person dies, whatever happens, these things remain in existence. And we can’t control that currently, because the issuing is not done by us. The taxi population is extremely high because of this,’ he says.