There are red-faces all round at Portugal’s road safety authority ANSR, due to a massive backlog in the ‘processing’ of traffic fines which will almost certainly lead to hundreds of thousands being consigned to the rubbish bin.
According to Público, there could be as many as a million fines held up in the 10-month hiatus.
Despite guarantees by the Ministry of Internal Administration that everything will be done to “avoid time-limits being allowed to lapse”, Público stresses “this may not be possible” because limits are “a constant reality in the processing of any fines.
“Last year, for example, ANSR let 225,800 infractions lapse”, said the paper.
The year before, the number was slightly less: 199,000.
But how many this latest embarrassment will see drop is still unclear.
Around 98,000 traffic fines were issued per month over 2015, the paper explains.
With a human resources problem kicking in last July – and only just sorted – it means that the intervening time-frame could have resulted in “almost a million fines” which 95 professionals (50 judges and 45 admin workers) will now have “great difficulty” in dealing with, given that new fines will be stacking up every single day.
Público explains that in the last four years, data on fines shows that between 85,000 and 127,000 are issued each month.
The bottom line is if you are waiting to receive papers on a traffic offence committed in the last 10 months, you may ‘get lucky’ and find that they never arrive.
