More than 125,000 vehicles face the threat of impoundment by the Dubai Police with the RTA writing them off for failing to re-register for over two years, according to a senior official.There are 128,797 vehicles that were last registered in December 2008 or before. The RTA has started writing these vehicles off beginning this month and hopes to delete the files of all such vehicles as and when they cross two years.Once impounded and written off, the offending motorists will have to pay hefty fines as well as register the vehicle anew, apart from being blacklisted for a while. The owner of an impounded vehicle will also have to go through the hassles of a difficult legal procedure and pay additional fines to get the vehicle released. The RTA had already extended the earlier deadline for such vehicles until the end of December 2010 and has no plans for further leniency. “We have given people enough time to get back in the legal purview, now we have already begun blocking the files of those who crossed more than two years without re-registering their vehicles,” said Ahmed Hashem Bahrozyan, CEO of RTA’s Licensing Agency.
The Dubai Police would impound the cars when found on the road and open a traffic case against the offenders, said the official.Even if the vehicles escape police, once the files are deleted, the motorists will not be able to process any vehicle-related transactions like Salik top-up, transfer, re-registration etc. as the files would be non-existent. “When the file gets deleted the vehicle has to be registered as new and the motorist has to pay late fee for the number of years the vehicle wasn’t registered apart from the payment of registration fee as well as the accumulated fines,” said Bahrozyan.The late payment fee for each year is Dh300 plus the fee to register the car anew would be Dh480. The minimum amount for lapse of one year is Dh780, plus accumulated fines, if any. He said accumulated fines are one of the biggest reasons most people are reluctant to re-register their vehicles. However, the authorities are willing to accept the fines in easy installments.“Most people don’t re-register their cars because they have accumulated large number of fines and in many cases it goes up to thousands of dirhams, but to make it easy for the people we have even introduced installment schemes and all the traffic fines including parking and Salik could be paid in installments,” added Bahrozyan.Individuals with accumulated traffic fines of Dh3,000 or more could pay in installments while companies with fines of over Dh5,000 can also avail the service – Kaleejnews
