Motorists better beware of ‘Nyamsoro’
According to Mr Edward Muiruri, project director, the aim is to promote road safety as well as create awareness and inform motorists of any outstanding traffic infringements.
MBOMBELA – Traffic on the N4 piled up on Friday as the Department of Community Safety, Security and Liaison welcomed the launch of the automated number-plate recognition system in Mpumalanga.
“I am glad to officially launch a system which will assist in tracking down offenders and making sure we detect those who do not pay their fines,” Mr Vusi Shongwe, MEC for the department said. “Although we had a similar system before, we experienced problems with the service provider. With this new one we will ensure that we address all traffic offenders.”
According to Mr Edward Muiruri, project director, the aim is to promote road safety as well as create awareness and inform motorists of any outstanding traffic infringements.
According to Mr Simon du Plessis, project manager, if there are any summonses on a person or Section 341 notices to a person, it will be detected. This notice is sent by post for violations caught on camera or for traffic tickets issued in the motorist’s absence.
According to Du Plessis, they have a complete database of the province, which is centralised in Mbombela, where all the offences are recorded.
“All summonses are on our database and all the vehicles are connected to the ones available on our buses. On each of these all the arrests can be scanned and printed out,” he said.
According to him the aim of these vehicles is to promote road safety as well as to create awareness and inform motorists if they have violated the law. “Our main concern is to create awareness and make sure people pay their fines.”
There are three buses which currently operate in various regions, with the fourth being underway. According to Du Plessis they are equipped to also operate at night.
“We look forward to introducing a personal digital assistant (PDA) which can be operated by hand and used to print out outstanding offences on the spot,” he said.
Shongwe baptised the buses “Nyamsoro”, which refers to a sangoma in Tsonga.
“With these sangomas we will be able to predict the illness of ‘sick’ motorists and detect those who have outstanding fines.”
Shongwe suggested and encouraged the HOD and traffic department to lead by example and launch the system by checking if they were up to date.
“To simply track down perpetrators is not enough. We should start with ourselves as government and politicians and ensure that we are up to date before checking others,” he concluded.
