General News of Thursday, 27 June 2002

Source: Ghanaian Times

MTU earns C687.6m from traffic offence charges

The Police Motor Traffic Unit (MTU) has since last year, paid a total of ?687.6 million being fines imposed on offending drivers to government chest.

Out of the amount, ?300 million accrued from fines from 12,000 accident cases recorded last year while ?50 million was generated from fines and penalties paid by drivers for either parking wrongly or abandoning their broken-down vehicles in the middle of the road. The remaining ?337.6 million were fines imposed on offending drivers by the courts between January and May, this year.

Superintendent Victor Tandoh, Commander of the MTU, disclosed these to the Ghanaian Times in Accra on Wednesday. He said vehicles left on the roads were towed away by the MTU?s recovery trucks in conjunction with the 24-Hour Towing Service.

Supt. Tandoh reminded drivers that it was an offence for them to leave their faulty vehicles on the road without placing warning triangles at the front and rear to warn oncoming vehicles. He said that discussions were underway for the MTU to procure triangles for sale to drivers arrested without them.