Can unpaid parking summonses block road tax renewals? No, says minister

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There is a belief that the local authorities can have your name blacklisted in the Road Transport Department’s (RTD/JPJ) database under the condition that there are unpaid summonses issued by the former. With that, the offender will not be able to renew their road tax.

Apparently, this is not entirely true.

A report by theSundaily indicates that Deputy Transport Minister, Datuk Aziz Kaprawi himself has cleared the air over the confusion. First, at this moment only three local governments have integrated with the RTD database, which then are able to blacklist vehicles with outstanding traffic summonses.

The three authorities are Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL), Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) and Shah Alam City Council (MBSA).

Here’s the most interesting bit – even then, vehicles can only be blacklisted if the unpaid summonses are for traffic offences. According to Aziz, such acts include parking at bus stops or fire hydrants and parking on yellow lines.

Parking related summonses, on the other hand, are under local government by-laws namely the Road Traffic Order (Metered Car Park) and Road Traffic Order (Provision Regarding Car Parks). As such, the best the local governments can do is to haul offenders to court for unpaid parking compounds. Blacklisting by RTD is not applicable.

The report also said that 125 local councils have applied to link with the RTD database in order to trace the address of vehicle owners.

"This is just for data sharing with local councils for them to send out reminders to car owners to settle unpaid fines and not for the purpose of blacklisting," said the minister.

Back in 2012, the Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ) announced that they will link their system with the RTD reportedly ‘to blacklist vehicles with outstanding summons’.

Picture: reinventingparking