MAKKAH: Makkah Police chief Muhammad Al-Harithy has said that although “everyone agrees on the benefits of the Saher system” he does recognize that “bringing it into operation so quickly might have had a number of detrimental effects”. “The Ministry of Interior, which is working hard to achieve accuracy and ensure safety, is not concerned with making material gains through the fines in so far as it is concerned with creating a deterrent, introducing discipline and protecting lives and property,” Al-Harithy said. He said, however, that the Traffic Department should have introduced the system by first “preparing the public properly and promoting awareness of the danger of speeding and of the penalties”. “There should have been procedures in place to produce greater awareness,” he said, noting that “tens of thousands” of motoring offenses had been committed by persons unable to pay the fines. “The majority were not able to pay, and most cars in our streets are driven by persons employed as drivers or the sons of the car owners, so the fines end up being in the name of sponsors and fathers, not the persons who committed the offenses,” he said. He concluded by saying that the system of fining needed “a rethink”. “A lot of those young people seek work with public security and to do so are required to have paid up all their fines, but not all the fines are necessarily for speeding, as a lot of the time they might be for other infractions such as offering paid taxi rides to passengers, as they have to find a way of earning some money somehow,” he said.
