Yesterday (20 August 2018), Transport Minister Anthony Loke defended his decision to cancel all unpaid Automated Enforcement System (AES) summonses after he was criticised by MCA Youth. He shot down their criticism by revealing that an ex-minister from MCA signed the lopsided contract.
Anthony shared that the contract allowed ATES and Beta Tegap Sdn Bhd to pocket the money paid by traffic offenders for their AES summonses. Following that revelation, Anthony further disclosed that the AES operators made a profit of RM129 million over six years from 2012 up until May 2018, according to FMT. Wah, so much money!
Source: The Star
FYI, the AES was introduced in the year 2012 to monitor and keep traffic offences under control.
He then shared that the money was paid to the companies by the previous government (Barisan Nasional) based on a two-tier contracted deal. Anthony explained that based on the contract, ATES and Beta received RM16 each under tier-1 and RM150 under tier-2 from each AES summons issued by the ex-government.
Source: NST
He was quoted saying,
“For tier-1, they were paid RM60.2 million and RM68.8 million for tier-2.”
Last Friday (17 August 2018), Anthony decided to cancel 3.1 million of outstanding AES traffic summonses, which amounted to RM435 million. He then announced that the Road Transport Department (JPJ) will take over the scheme starting 1 September 2018.
Source: Mole
Despite claims that the move will cost the government their revenue, Loke refuted it by stating the money from the paid summonses would have gone to ATES and Beta Tegap instead of the PH government. Besides that, the new government (PH) doesn’t accept the privatisation of the AES.
“Based on all these reasons, the government decided to write off all the outstanding summonses to resolve the AES issue that has dragged on for six years without any settlement,” said Anthony.
Source: Car List
Anthony finally added that the companies have recovered their investment and profited a lot in this scheme, so cancelling AES wouldn’t affect them as much. Looks like the companies won’t have a problem with the AES cancellation.
What are your thoughts on Anthony’s decision and the profit made by the AES operators? Leave us your opinions in the comments!
Also read: Contract Signed By Ex-Minister Allowed Companies to Pocket Money From AES Summonses
