MINISTER of National Security Peter Bunting says the government is working to reconcile the databases of Tax Administration of Jamaica (TAJ) and the island’s courts, to add all traffic tickets that have been paid on both systems.

Speaking at a press briefing held at the ministry’s offices in New Kingston yesterday, Bunting said the consolidation process, which is now in progress, should be completed by February.

He said at that time, Cabinet will decide whether there will be an extension of the previous amnesty.

“All those 127,000 tickets that were settled during the amnesty we’re going to upload those (to the database). We have a huge project going on where we’ve gone to the courts and we’re going through their manual-based system and we’re doing the data entry to bring the tickets settled at the courts onto the electronic database,” he stated.

The security minister said the final stage of the process is to resolve those cases involving persons who say they have paid their tickets, but those tickets are still seen on the system as unpaid.

“We will be setting up machinery to resolve those tickets that are being contested,” he stated. “When that is complete, Cabinet will decide, after looking at all the data, whether it makes sense to have another brief amnesty or whether we can go forward with making the payments in the courts, as what is in place now,” he stated.

Bunting also said he has asked Head of the Traffic Department Superintendent Radcliffe Lewis to refrain from enforcing arrest warrants on those tickets until “we are confident that all the payments are reflected and brought current”.  

During the course of the six-month amnesty, the Government settled approximately 127,000 tickets and collected just under $350 million.