Gauteng traffic police are being given daily targets of fines to issue but these do not lead to prosecutions as they are issued manually and the courts say they are overloading their systems.

This was revealed during a meeting of the public accounts committee (Scopa), where it interrogated the annual reports for the 2017/18 financial year of the Gauteng department of community safety.

The department conceded to writing off more than R255m worth of fines in the reporting year.

It says its fines are being struck off the roll in court.

 “With cases being struck off the court roll, there was no other way to recover [the fines]. Currently, an electronic system is being piloted [and]  major offenders [are] being profiled with the intention to make direct follow-up through unannounced visits by officers, and roadblocks,” the department said in its reply.

Department head Yoliswa Makhasi said the new system also allows for SMSes to be sent to the recipient of the fine.

“Since I arrived in the department tin 2016, we’ve been having conversations with the courts on how best we can deal with the issue of the fines. Each of the traffic officers, about 800 of them on the field, has been given certain targets per day in terms of issuing fines. The courts have been complaining that these are blocking the system - there are too many  that are coming from community safety - yet they must still work with the other law enforcement agencies in the province…The fines are on paper and are not electronic. They need capacity on their side [to process them],” said Makhasi.

She added that the pilot electronic system is showing signs of improvement.

“The tender process has gone through the evaluation stage and we are waiting for the bid adjudication.”