Moscow authorities have introduced a new solution to the problem of traffic tickets that are late or unpaid. They have proposed to administer a system themselves instead of the traffic police.
"The traffic police officers will only record the violation and send the information to the Department of Transportation in Moscow, and they in turn will be responsible for submitting the information to the State Information System of State and Municipal Payments," one of the participants of a meeting with First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov told Kommersant.
If the proposal is accepted, drivers will get receipts with all the necessary payment details from the Transportation Department.
Moscow authorities expect to do a better job at controlling the individual identification numbers assigned to each fine and payer.
Largely due to a lack of individual identification numbers for the fines issued by the traffic police, there were failures with the processing of fines when it was impossible to identify which fine a person was paying. As a result, the paid amounts often did not fully cover the necessary fine and citizens were registered as non-payers.
Bankers are not against the new approach. "The main thing is to correctly form the individual identification codes so that the paid fines are reflected in the system and the citizens who are free of debts are not listed as debtors. It doesn't matter to us who issues the receipt," said Alexander Turskov, the vice president of Intercommerz Bank.
City officials have been asked to submit their complete proposals on the issue to the government by Sept. 1.
In the meantime, the traffic police deny any knowledge on the issue, saying that there are no failings on their side.
According to Vera Chistova, head of the Moscow Department of Finance, traffic fines bring in 10 billion rubles ($307 million) to the city's annual budget.
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