KUALA LUMPUR - The Malaysian police are offering a 50 per cent discount for traffic offenders to clear their outstanding summonses online from Jan 18 to Feb 1, as part of their push this year to promote e-payments, Bernama reported.

The announcement was made by Bukit Aman Traffic Investigation and Enforcement Department director Azisman Alias at a special press conference on Monday (Jan 13) where the police gave a briefing on their achievements last year and plans in 2020.

Malaysian police periodically give steep discounts on tickets issued for traffic offences, such as speeding or beating a red light, to entice people to pay their fines. Members of the public tend to hoard the tickets until the discount windows are announced by the authorities.

The police have previously said that less than 30 per cent of the approximately five million summonses issued each year are settled by traffic offenders.

This year, the police are emphasising e-payments for summonses, especially during the festive season, to allow the public to skip waiting in line to settle the fines, Datuk Azisman said.

"We never did online payment before, which would not require people to queue for hours to pay," he said.

Motorists can pay their fines through the Malaysian government portals he added.

The latest discount comes barely a month after another concession was offered to motorists during the Christmas period.

Thousands of Malaysians queued up in Kuala Lumpur to clear their fines on Christmas Eve and Boxing Day after the police announced that 50 per cent discounts would be offered over the two days.

Separately, Mr Azisman said the police had managed to reduce the number of fatal accidents that occur on the roads by 107 cases or 1.8 per cent. The cases of fatal crashes reported last year fell to 5,763 compared with 5,870 cases in 2018, he said.

"Although the number is small, this is our KPI, and we expect this number to reduce every year," he was quoted as saying by Bernama.