The Road Safety and Transport Authority (RSTA) collected close to Nu 41 M in the financial year 2018-19 for violating traffic regulations. According to their fine collection report, it is a decrease of about Nu 4 M compared to the previous year.
The RSTA says their main aim is to reduce the number of people coming into conflict with the traffic laws.
“The decreased amount of fine collection indicates that people are more into compliance, which means they are now convinced that road rules are important and they have to play safely on the road. We are looking forward to bring down this further, the collection of fines should be reduced further and to have this, we would like to intensify our road safety campaigns and intensify roads compliance inspections,” Sonam Dhendup, the Programme Officer of RSTA, said.
From the total fines collected, the highest fine is collected from the Thimphu region with over Nu 17 M followed by Gelegphu with Nu 10 M and Phuentsholing Nu 7 M. And the least is collected from Samdrup Jongkhar region with about Nu 2 M.
“The reason for Thimphu region being highest could be because around 46 to 47 per cent of total vehicles are in this region. So when there are too many vehicles, the number of violations can also be in huge number, so that could be the reason why the collection in Thimphu is quite high compared to other regions,” Sonam Dhendup said.
Today, there are more than 100,000 vehicles in the country.
Pema Seldon Tshering
