Police bowed to political pressure and announced on Monday a month’s extension to the deadline for the payment of traffic camera fines. The payment period for pending traffic fines started on January 8 and was to have lasted until March 31, after which legal action would be taken against offenders.

In an announcement issued on Monday the police reminded that pending fine payments should have been settled by March 31, before adding: “However, it is noted, that because of the positive response of the public, the very high demand on the payment platform and the forthcoming Easter festivities, it was decided, in order to facilitate pending payments, to give an extension until 30 April 2025.”

These are fines imposed between January 2022 and September 30, 2024, and there are an estimated 200,000 unpaid fines. In short, some of the fines have gone unpaid for as long as three years and the offenders are being given another month’s extensions to pay them. People had been given the last three months to pay their fines, but still failed to do so, despite the alleged “positive response” and “high demand” mentioned by the police.

For several weeks now, deputies had been discussing the number of fines, the deadline, the penalty points, the legal implications and so forth and it was obvious they would seek to delay the deadline. Putting back deadlines is such a common practice in Cyprus – for road tax and tax declarations it is an annual occurrence – that nobody takes them seriously. But if people can pay by the second deadline, why can they not learn to pay by the initial deadline?

As regards the traffic camera fines, apart from deputies pandering to the voters by pushing for an extension of the deadline, there was also a practical consideration – the courts would be inundated with cases of unpaid fines, clogging up an already congested justice system. And the cases would, most likely, be heard in four or five years from now. It is very likely that for an offence committed in 2022 the driver would eventually pay the fine in 2030. With such a slow-moving justice system, is it any surprise that people do not bother paying their fines?

Deputies claimed it was wrong to expect people to check a website to find out if traffic fines had been imposed on them. But have letters not been sent to drivers informing them of the fine? Of course, everyone in Cyprus claims not have received any mail relating to fines, which is why such correspondence is sent by registered mail. Funnily enough, there is never a problem for households receiving their electricity bills on time.

Unless the authorities take a tough line on matters such as the prompt payment of fines this unmanageable situation of having hundreds of thousands of unpaid fines will simply get worse.