No chance of Aarto meeting deadline - RFA

The 2014 deadline for rollout and implementation of the new Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences Act (Aarto) is unlikely to be met. That’s according to the road freight industry, despite the Minister of Transport’s statements to the contrary. According to Gavin Kelly, spokesman for the Road Freight Association, no progress has been seen for months despite the fact that government was required to publish the new set of regulations in August last year. “Since then they have asked for extensions twice on the publication of the new regulations with nothing else forthcoming,” he told FTW. “Aarto has remained elusive for nine years. We don’t see any imminent implementation and think the minister is being overly confident in a 2014 date as they have yet to get it working in the two pilot areas. Transport minister Ben Martins has declined to give more detail on where the Aarto proceedings are at this stage only saying it will be fully operational by 2014. Kelly said a number of stumbling blocks still existed including a tussle over who gets the proceeds from fines, while the operation of the database to support the point demerit system and the communication process still has to be addressed. “We have put several proposals on the table around concerns that we had over Aarto that were accepted at the time by the DoT. But we have yet to see any of these proposals in the regulations.”