By Gary Hatigeva
HONIARA City Mayor, Andrew Mua says the council has completed tasks to finalize and enforce its ordinances on the nature of public transportation and related areas including tinted windows, but are waiting on the Attorney General’s Chamber to gazette it.
The HCC Mayor revealed this when interviewed yesterday over the highlighted issues, which made headlines over the past few weeks.
Last month, the Honiara City Council made announcements and gave strong warnings to public transportation operators of new programmes to crackdown on illegal buses as well as a thorough check for tinted windows of both buses and taxis, operating under HCC business licences.
Following these announcements, the issue was closely being monitored by the general public of Honiara city and made widespread discussions and debates after the projected timeframe for enforcement of the revealed programmes were said to have been forgotten or faded away.
Some concerned Honiara residents also took the matter to various local online forums, questioning why nothing was seen to have been done despite the lapsed timeframe.
Mua however assured that the enforcement exercise will still go ahead despite the delays.
“We want to make arrests and press penalties that are legalised as part of our by-laws,” Mua added.
He further stressed that by having the ordinances gazetted will allow for the enforcement programmes to apply full forces of the laws including relevant sections that imply the penalties to correspond with each other.
As part of the legislation there have also been works conducted to further strengthened and give maximum benefits to the penalties as a result of breaches to the HCC laws.
He said once all that is done then the council’s enforcement unit will start mobilising and vehicles especially public transportations are reminded to start adhering to authority calls and ensure tints and other related areas prohibited under relevant laws are followed.
He said with the laws gazetted and become legal, those caught will be penalized with hefty fines and that there is no turning back if people are caught.
“Therefore public transportation operators and owners again reminded to comply with the council’s earlier warnings and calls,” the Mayor stressed.
