JOHOR BARU • Johor traffic police plan to conduct more operations to track down traffic offenders in the coming weeks, ahead of the Chinese New Year holidays on Feb 8 and 9.

Johor police traffic chief Baharudin Mat Taib said Singaporean drivers owe the state RM6.5 million (S$2.1 million) in fines for traffic offences over the past two years, the New Straits Times reported.

"There are more than 40,000 traffic offenders from Singapore who committed offences in Johor. They have yet to pay a total of RM6.5 million in outstanding summonses over the past two years," he said.

The state police issued 19,555 summonses to Singapore-registered vehicles last year, down from 23,339 in 2014. However, they managed to collect only RM296,680 from 1,863 summonses settled last year and another RM870,200 from 5,950 summonses issued in 2014, The Sun Daily reported.

Superintendent Baharudin said most of the Singaporean drivers were issued summonses related to illegal parking and speeding.

Fines for illegal parking range from RM70 to RM100. The fine for speeding is RM150 if it is settled within a week after it is issued. However, failure to do so would result in the fine increasing by RM50 every week, up to RM300 after 21 days.

Local drivers have also failed to pay fines for traffic violations, according to Supt Baharudin. He said there were 31,110 locally registered traffic offenders who owed RM9.3 million in fines, the New Straits Times reported.

"The traffic offenders are Malaysians who each owe summonses exceeding RM300. If the summonses were collected from these offenders, the collection could reach RM9.3 million," Supt Baharudin said.

The state traffic police issued a total of 489,947 summonses to Malaysian drivers and collected RM21.81 million in fines last year.