Police need awareness on Act

POLICE in Port Moresby are yet to enforce fines under the new RoadTraffic Act, Boroko traffic headquarters officer in-charge Joseph Salle says.
Salle told The National that the Act was in effect from this month but they still needed to do awareness on fines and offences like overloading before they could actually arrest and charge offending motorists.
“We have already used the law to arrest traffic offenders who are involved in road accidents since the beginning of this month,” he said.
Salle said new fines and penalties were effective under the Act.
“We are still working with the Road Transport Authority to carry out awareness to educate our road users and drivers before we can apply them (new rules or laws),” he said.
Salle said at the same time, the RTA had not issued them new traffic infringement notices that were amended to complement the new Act that would be issued to offenders when they were booked.
“The amended TIN (traffic infringement notices) are not made available yet as per the fines that are outlined in the new Act. Once they are made available, we will be actually issuing them to the drivers and road users to have them pay the fines,” he said.
Salle said traffic officers were still using the old TIN to fine offenders.