By Sukoluhle Ndlovu
The new Traffic Management System has recorded more than five million traffic offences, Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Kazembe Kazembe has said.
Responding to complaints raised in Parliament about motorists receiving incorrect tickets, Kazembe admitted that the system had made errors, including possible mistakes in capturing vehicle registration numbers, but said the problems were being investigated and corrected.
He said the system was believed to be 98 to 99 percent accurate, although this did not excuse the errors reported by motorists.
“We want to believe that the system is probably 98% accurate, if not 99%. But that does not justify those errors,” he said.
The minister said the mistakes could be linked to failures in the ticket validation process, which requires police officers to check video footage before issuing tickets.
“But the officers are supposed to validate before the ticket is issued. So someone might have missed it,” he said.
Kazembe said he had spoken to the police Commissioner-General, asking him to ensure that complaints were dealt with urgently.
He said motorists were being provided with links to view footage of the alleged offences and check whether the vehicles involved were theirs.
“You are not being asked to go and pay without verification. That’s why it’s giving you a link. It’s providing you a link to connect and check the video if it’s correct or not,” he said.
He, however, acknowledged that checking the footage should be the responsibility of police officers before tickets are issued, adding that the matter was being examined internally.
Kazembe also said the system had been developed by local telecommunications company TelOne, thanking President Emmerson Mnangagwa for allowing a local company to develop a solution to the country’s traffic management challenges.
“The system has been designed by TelOne, a local company. So we want to give them the benefit of doubt,” he said.
He maintained that this did not absolve the authorities of responsibility for the errors.
