Drivers will now be given 90 days to pay their Traffic Infringement fines instead of the current 21 day period.
This has been made possible after the passing of the Land Transport Amendment Bill 2017 in parliament yesterday.
While speaking on the new law, Attorney General Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum says the Land Transport Amendment Bill now gives LTA 21 days to prepare and distribute the Traffic Infringement Notices.
He says as a result of the inability of the LTA to be able to dispatch these notices, there is a huge level of absence of natural justice.
Sayed-Khaiyum says the new law allows the person that will be receiving the notice to pay the penalty in 90 days or 3 months.
He says this will also allow people to pay the penalty in installments which LTA does not allow at the moment.
Sayed-Khaiyum says if after the 3 months there is still no payment, then there will be an additional penalty.
Sayed-Khaiyum says the amendment is urgent because people are getting booked everyday.
He says the law allows for the issuance of stop departure orders until the penalty is paid.
Sayed-Khaiyum says there is a total of 99,687 Traffic Infringement Notices before the courts in Fiji.
While responding to Opposition member Mosese Bulitavu’s concern of the Bill being unfair to those who have already paid the fine, Sayed-Khaiyum says they have to look ahead and fix the issue.
Opposition Leader Ro Teimumu Kepa said the bill really had good points however she raised concern that the opposition was not given time to have a look at the LTA Bill.
She said that they normally get the bills one hour before the debate however in this case, they were given the bill just before the debate.
