In the last two years, the amount of unpaid fines for traffic violations has increased significantly. According to the data of the Agency for Identification Documents, Records and Data Exchange of Bosnia and Herzegovina, this amount increased by 124.2 percent in the last year alone.
The amount of unpaid fines this year is almost 25 million marks, while foreign citizens were fined 215 thousand marks. The growing trend of total debt based on unpaid fines indicates the need to strengthen enforcement mechanisms and enforcement control, and to improve the information system for recording and monitoring fines.
“It is shocking information that there are 25 million unpaid fines. Secondly, I am keenly interested in which service of the cantonal MUP keeps records of these fines. If you don’t pay for gas, they sue you, if you don’t pay for heating, they sue you, the waterworks too. I don’t know what it’s about, but that’s more of a question for the MUP,” says driver Armin Skalonja.
The collection of fines is not the responsibility of the police, they told us from the MUP of the Zenica-Doboj Canton. Police administrations undertake as much as they are competent, while the jurisdiction for collecting unpaid fines rests with the court in whose territory the offense was committed.
“All problems related to non-payment of fines are not within the jurisdiction of the police. Within their jurisdiction, the police act very energetically and undertake all measures and actions permitted by law,” points out the spokeswoman of the MUP ZDK Lejla Ekinović.
Passing new laws would not lead to improvement, it would even have a counter-effect, according to Mustafa Mehanović, permanent court expert in the field of traffic.
“So, if we are working on enacting some other obligations and measures, and we know that these are not respected either, we are only increasing the number of articles in the law that the participants, groups of road users do not respect. If you have a large number of cases, you really have to ask yourself why this is so,” emphasizes Mehanović.
“A law that does not have sanctions is not enforceable. We have laws, we have sanctions, only sanctions should be applied. There is no thinking when applying sanctions. It is written to you and that is what you do. Accordingly, if someone does not want to pay, it is known that default interest applies, it is known that the court will go”, says the former Minister of Internal Affairs of KS Nermin Pećanac.
The confiscation of the vehicle did not prove to be effective enough either. Quite a few drivers are also prone to manipulation, such as registering the vehicle to a family member, or transferring the offense to another person.
(TYPE/Source: bhrt.ba/Author: Tarik Čardaković/Photo: Illustration)
