Joburg stops speed camera contracts

Johannesburg motorists have been receiving no speeding fines in the mail in the past few months.

This is because the City of Johannesburg took a decision at the end of February not to renew contracts with service providers that assisted with the electronic enforcement of speed limits.

Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) spokesman Wayne Minnaar said on Thursday said there was still manual speed enforcement in the city‚ but not at the level it was before March.

“There was a decision taken by the city to increase police visibility. Therefore all speed enforcement was done manually‚” JMPD spokesman Wayne Minnaar said.

He said this meant there were fewer cameras on the roads as more JMPD officials concentrated on law enforcement.

“It means where officers identify a speeding hotspot‚ officers man the cameras manually and issue the fines directly to offending motorists. The city has decided to do away with electronic enforcement‚” Minnaar said.

The contracts‚ which were not renewed at the end of February provided calibrated cameras‚ the vehicles used to place the speed cameras every day‚ uploading the data from speed cameras and issuing fines that were sent to the Post Office.

Minnaar said there had been an improvement in curbing speeding in the city because of police visibility.

“These contracts have not been renewed for the purposes of increasing the visibility of officers on the road. These officers used to man the cameras.”

Minnaar said the decision not to renew the contracts has not affected the JMPD’s ability to perform its tasks nor general law enforcement.

He said the JMPD did not depend on fines generated from traffic offences to run the department.

“The JMPD gets a budget from the city for all its operations‚ including salaries‚ by-law enforcement and traffic enforcement‚” he said.