The city traffic police has introduced a QR (quick response) code system to ensure hassle free spot payment of fines by motorists in case of traffic violations.
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The traffic police moved to a cashless e-challan system from March 2018 and after this, traffic officials only issued summons to violators and did not collect cash. Motorists used to pay fines through digital wallet, ATM card, online, E- seva points and post offices. Though in the initial stages, the compliance of payment of fines was good, it deteriorated with time as many violators did not pay the fines promptly.
Faced with this problem of non-payment of fines, the city police has introduced 12 call centres which made phone calls and informed the violators about pending violations and exhorted them to pay fines within a week failing which the cases would be pushed to virtual courts.
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Launching a new QR Code system on Thursday, the City Police Commissioner Shankar Jiwal said, “The call centre system has led to improvement of compliance from 21% to 47%. However, when contacted by the staff of call centres, motorists have shown willingness to pay but have expressed difficulties in the payment mode and requested more methods of payments. To improve the payment of fines, the Greater Chennai Traffic Police (GCTP) has explored the ways which included bulk SMS system, payments facilitation centers and partnering with payment platforms. The GCTP in association with Paytm has come up with improved methods of payment of fines through QR code.”
Additional Commissioner of Police, Traffic Kapilkumar C. Saratkar said 300 small hand held QR code cards will be provided to all enforcement officers. Traffic violators can scan the QR from these cards and it will take them to the Paytm App E- Challan page. Users can enter the challan ID and vehicle number and complete the payment using all the pay modes including UPI. The fine can be paid on the spot without any hassle. Training has been imparted to traffic officers to guide the users pay fine through the hand held QR code cards, he said while adding the QR code standees would be provided to call centres as well.
Talking to reporters, Mr. Jiwal said after the introduction of e-challan system, there was not much complaint of corruption by the personnel from the motorists except two incidents that were reported in the last one year. He also said police personnel of law and order would soon be given a breath analyser and e-challan system to handle additional drunken driving cases in the night hours.