PUTRAJAYA: The government has collected RM5.3 million out of RM37 million worth of summonses issued for offences under the Automated Awareness Safety System (Awas) since April.
Road Transport Department director general Datuk Shaharuddin Khalid said out of the 251,193 summonses issued since April 15 to yesterday, 229,319 were for speeding and 21,874 for beating the traffic light.
Awas is an amalgamation of the demerit system under the Traffic Offences System (Kejara) and Automated Enforcement System cameras (AES).
He said out of the 35,659 summonses paid, totalling RM5,330,400, 29,957 comprised of individual summonses while 5,735 involved company summonses.
"The summonses were all issued via the 21 Awas cameras located throughout the country," he said.
Shaharuddin pointed out that the main reason for the introduction of Awas was to educate motorists to respect and adhere to traffic laws.
"So it doesn't matter if there is a phone application being developed to determine the locations of the AES cameras.
"We actually welcome such initiative from anyone who want to develop such app because we want to educate our drivers to obey the traffic rules and we don't want to issue summonses unecessarily.
"As a matter of fact, we have also put up signboards as prior warning to motorists on the speed cameras ahead of them," he said.
Shaharuddin said RTD has also reduced the summons to RM150 from the original RM300 for those who settle the fine within three months.
"If they failed to do so, legal actions can be taken against them.
"We are currently talking with the Attorney-General Chambers to enable the department to take legal action against those who fail to pay their penalties within six months. Legal action is possible under Section 53 of the RTD Act 1957," he added.
Meanwhile, Shaharuddin announced that a total of 15,405 vehicles were inspected during Ops Tutup, a week-long operation that started on Oct 2 to apprehend lorries and heavy vehicles carrying construction materials such as bricks, stones and sand.
"Of the vehicles inspected, 8,371 offences were detected and 5,594 summonses were issued.
"Among the offences include not possessing driving licences and goods driving licences (GDL), driving with an expired licence and GDL, and carrying goods beyiond the allowable limit." he added.
Shaharuddin said RTD will carry out a special operation, codenamed Ops Sisih 1 and Ops Sisih 2, beginning November to hunt down bus drivers who has previous records of road offences and driving without a commercial driving licence (CDL).
"This will be the first of its kind, conducted before the school holidays and Chinese New Year celebration." he added.
Meanwhile, Shaharuddin said RTD will open a booking tender for National Blue Ocean Strategy (NBOS) vehicles registeration number on Oct 23 and the results will be released on Nov 6.