August 31 2011 at 04:24pm
By BRONWYNNE JOOSTE and SIBUSISO NKOMO
JP Smith, the mayoral committee member for safety and security, talks to traffic officials during the execution of warrants of arrest for traffic offences in the Durbanville area last night. Photo: Ayanda Ndamane
More than 20 taxi drivers, with more than 100 outstanding warrants between them, spent a night in the police cells after a municipal magistrate refused to hear their cases.
And at least 27 warrants were executed by the city traffic department in Durbanville last night as part of Operation Reclaim.
Following an Operation Reclaim roadblock in Bellville yesterday, traffic services arrested 28 taxi drivers, whose 105 outstanding warrants involved just over R175 000.
In total, 199 outstanding warrants were detected, but while the rest of the drivers were able to pay their debt, the 28 could not. They were taken to Parow Municipal Court.
However, the magistrate refused to hear the cases. The city said the courts had asked for warnings but these were not always possible.
Eventually, four of the drivers paid R5 900 to clear their warrants. But the remaining 24 were detained at three police stations and were due to appear in the municipal court today.
Hishaam Mohamed, the regional head of the Department of Justice, said traffic officers needed to inform the courts that they were bringing people before them.
JP Smith, the mayoral committee member for safety and security, said this was not the first time offenders had been turned away at the court. He said a few weeks ago, 11 motorists were nabbed and the magistrate refused to hear the case, sending the errant motorists away with warnings to appear later.
Smith said Parow Municipal Court was “symptomatic” of under-resourced courts. “Courts are struggling to cope and this is severely curtailing operations.”
Smith said the city had set aside R4 million this year to assist municipal and community courts. He also serves on the provincial courts steering committee and said it had agreed to gradually start expanding courts’ capacity.
He said the municipal court had asked traffic services to let them know by 11am if they were bringing offenders in. This was then changed to 9am, but the earlier time slot was not always possible because of the nature of operations
Smith said it was unfortunate that the offenders would have to spend a night in custody.
“We don’t people to sit in cells overnight, we want people to move on with their lives,” he said .
Smith said the city had regular meetings with the provincial department of justice. The “under-resourcing” of courts had been discussed, and a memorandum of understanding had been signed about working together to increase capacity.
During the execution of warrants last night, the Cape Argus accompanied traffic officers to the home of a man who had not paid his fine since 2009.
He was given the option of paying immediately or spending the night in jail. He opted to pay.
Smith said the city wanted to make the public aware that the offences eventually do catch up with people.
If a person had three or more fines outstanding and a warrant of arrest had been issued, that person would be tracked down and arrested.
In other cases where a person had only one outstanding fine, they would be visited at home, warned and asked to sign a receipt of notice.
If a person had not paid their fine or failed to appear in court, they would have to pay their fine plus a contempt of court fine, which doubles the fine amount.
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