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PUTRAJAYA: The Cabinet has agreed to extend the 50% discount on traffic summonses to March 10, Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Tun Hussein said Wednesday.

He said this was to give offenders more time to settle their summonses.

The Cabinet agreed on the extension period after considering the sincerity of the offenders to pay up, despite doing it in the last minute, he added.

"We know they want to settle their summonses when they took the trouble to queue up till midnight.

"We also took into consideration their grouses, such as extremely long queues, not enough counters and the system being down, that prevented them from paying up.

"So the Cabinet agreed it was justifiable that the discount be extended for another 10 days, starting March 1," he told a press conference at his office.

During the initial discount period, which began on Aug 12 last year, a total of 5.5 million summonses were paid, including 1.5 million which were settled in the past week.

When the offer ended on Monday, some 17.3 million traffic summonses remained unpaid.

Hishammuddin said after March 10, those who did not settle their summonses would be blacklisted and must pay the full amount of their fines to be removed from the list.

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PETALING JAYA: All Klang valley and state post offices will be open on March 5 and 6, from 8.30am to 5pm, to accept payments for traffic summonses, Pos Malaysia group managing director and CEO Datuk Syed Faisal Albar said Thursday.

"We understand there are customers who may face difficulty in paying their summonses during weekdays, so we're going the extra mile by allowing them to make the payments this weekend," he said.

Syed Faisal said he hoped the public would take this opportunity to ensure their summonses were settled.

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ERRANT motorists are finally taking heed of the government's extension of the deadline to settle outstanding summonses.

Deputy Inspector-General of Police Datuk Hussin Ismail said 220,000 summonses were settled in the first 24 hours of the announcement of the new deadline.

This brought the number of summonses settled since August last year to 5.72 million.

Hussin also said the total number of summonses settled from Jan 1 last year till yesterday was 7.9 million, leaving another 15 million summonses unsettled.

Police are hopeful that this figure will decrease drastically by the new deadline of March 10.

A check by the New Straits Times at a few payment locations revealed that the public were taking the new deadline seriously.

At the city traffic police headquarters on Jalan Tun H.S. Lee, queue numbers were snapped up within hours after the counters had opened.

At the Jalan Tun Sambanthan post office, 10 extra counters were opened yesterday.

Payment counters at the district police headquarters will be open from 8am to 10pm until March 10.

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THE government is not being lenient by extending the deadline to settle traffic summonses, said Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin.

He said the main reason for the extension until March 10 was the technical glitches faced by the police in handling the sudden surge in payments.

"Because of the congestion, the police faced some problems with the computer system and it would not be fair to those who actually turned up to pay before the Feb 28 deadline," he said during the Kinabatangan Juara Rakyat Programme in Simpang Entilibon, Tongod, Sabah, yesterday.

Muhyiddin, however, stressed there would be no more extensions after March 10.

In August last year, the cabinet warned that motorists who failed to settle their outstanding summonses by Feb 28 would be blacklisted and not allowed to renew their driving licences and road tax.

By December, authorities were offering errant motorists a 50 per cent discount to pay up early, but on Tuesday, police announced that only 65 per cent of the 49.4 million summonses issued since 2000 had been settled by Monday's deadline.

The police echoed Muhyiddin's statement, saying the extension was to "make up for lost time" due to erratic online payment systems and the last-minute rush which caused the systems to crash.

Deputy Inspector-General of Police Datuk Hussin Ismail said people who have yet to pay up should appreciate the extension and pay up quickly.

"The crowds at police stations caused the computer systems to encounter problems as it could not handle the high volume effectively.

"This extension will also allow those who want to appeal to come forward," he said after signing an agreement between the police and Pos Malaysia Berhad to set up payment counters for traffic summonses in post offices nationwide.

He said the lackadaisical and procrastinating attitude of the public had contributed to the problems.

Hussin said there were "reasons" why the government decided to extend the deadline.

One of them was to be fair to those who faced trouble paying up when the systems failed.

On whether the online payment systems would fail again when people tried to meet the deadline, Hussin said: "God willing, we can cope."

Sociologist Prof Dr Abdul Hadi Zakaria, however, felt that the government was being lenient by extending the deadline while the errant motorists were simply procrastinating.

Malaysians are not willing to react to anything they do not like until they were required to do so by law, he said.

Malaysia Crime Prevention Foundation vice-chairman Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye, meanwhile, felt that refusing to settle the fine was a reflection of the motorists' lack of respect for the law.

A check by the New Straits Times yesterday, however, found that people had been lining up at police stations and post offices from early morning to meet the deadline.

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Despite deadline extension, only 4% of outstanding summonses settled

PUTRAJAYA: Only 4% of the 17.3 million traffic summonses still outstanding at the end of last month have been settled, despite the second extension to the 50% discount offer to clear fines, Deputy Home Minister Datuk Wira Abu Seman Yusop said.

Abu Seman said despite all the repeated calls from motorists for an further extension to the Feb 28 deadline to settle summonses at a discount, only 700,000 had been settled until Monday.

"If the offenders are genuine (in their intention to settle their summonses), then they should come forward and pay the fines.

"We urge motorists who still have 16.6 million outstanding summonses to settle their fines quickly," e told a press conference here Monday.

He was commenting on the progress of payments on the fines that had been made after the Home Minister announced last week the extension to the discount period to March 10.

The extension was granted after considering grouses by offenders that their attempts to pay were hampered by extremely long queues, not enough counters and the system being down.

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PUTRAJAYA: Only 4% of the 17.3 million outstanding traffic summonses at the end of last month have been settled a week after an extension was granted on the 50% discount offer, Deputy Home Minister Datuk Wira Abu Seman Yusop said.

He said that despite calls from motorists for an extension to the original Feb 28 deadline, only 700,000 summonses were settled as at yesterday.

“If the offenders are genuine in their intention, they should come forward and pay their fines.

“We urge motorists, who still have 16.6 million outstanding summonses, to quickly settle their fines because the deadline ends on Thursday,” he told reporters here yesterday.

The Government granted the extension after considering problems of long queues, lack of counters and a stalled computer system.

During the initial discount period, which began from Aug 12 last year, 5.5 million summonses were paid.

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PETALING JAYA: The final deadline to settle traffic summonses was as chaotic as the last one on Feb 28 – hundreds thronged police stations frantic to settle by 10pm Thursday night.

Many went home disappointed as police stations informed them they had run out of queue numbers for traffic offenders to settle their summonses.

Supervisor Ayub Khan said he went on two consecutive days to the police station but could not get a queue number.

“The police told us to pay at the post office, but when I went to the post office they told me that their computer system was down due to the volume of transactions,” he said.

He added that the authorities should have improved the system so that it would not crash when the transaction volume increased. The Government had granted an extension on its Feb 28 deadline to March 10 after considering problems of long queues, lack of counters and a stalled computer system.

During the initial discount period, which began on Aug 12 last year, about 5.5 million summonses were paid, including the 1.5 million which were settled in the past week.

Some 17.3 million summonses remained unpaid when the last deadline expired on Feb 28.

From next month onwards, traffic offenders will be blacklisted and will not be able to renew their driving licences or road tax. A salesman, who wanted to be known as Choy, said he took a few days off to settle his summonses.

“I went to six different police stations and four post offices around Kuala Lumpur and Selangor and finally managed to pay here. Maintenance officer Ahmad Zul Hussin said he queued for three days and hoped to settle his five traffic summonses before the deadline expired.

When contacted, a spokesman from Pos Malaysia said its online services were temporarily congested due to the massive number of users trying to pay their bills online.

In GEORGE TOWN, Penang police collected RM24mil in summons payment from traffic offenders from August last year to yesterday, state police chief Datuk Ayub Yaakob said.

Police also recorded a huge increase in the number of people wanting to pay their summonses during the period, with a daily average of 500 to 600, he told reporters at the Timur Laut district police headquarters.

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