A mother who tried to pay her teenaged daughter's traffic ticket had her cheque sent back to her — before being told not to bother paying the fine.

And it took another motorist almost six weeks before she was allowed to pay a $50 parking fine, despite repeated attempts on her part to stump up the cash. Police told her to forget the fee — but she refused.

Both women, neither of whom wished to be named, contacted The Royal Gazette yesterday to describe the tortuous process of trying to get the authorities to accept payment for traffic infringements.

Their comments follow 75-year-old Michael Bickley's description of how he was twice turned away from Hamilton Magistrates' Court when he tried to clear his $50 parking ticket, as reported in yesterday's newspaper.

Last year, Government lost more than $1 million in revenue from unpaid tickets. Two-thirds of the 33,000 fines issued to motorists during 2008 were still outstanding six months later.

The mother, from Warwick, said her 17-year-old daughter got a ticket after running a stop sign on King Street on her scooter. "She gave me the money for the ticket and I gave her a cheque," said the woman.

"She dropped it off at Magistrates' Court on her way to school and it came back in the mail. They said to go to the Police prosecutions office to get a case number. I went two weeks after the incident and they didn't have the ticket in the system.

"The Police officer at Police prosecutions said: 'Don't worry about it'. I spoke to a sergeant and he excused my daughter from the ticket."

The woman added: "They gave my daughter a letter to excuse her from the ticket. I said: 'We are not trying to get out of paying the ticket. She admits it but nobody wants to take our money.'"

A female motorist said she got a $50 ticket on June 1 after leaving her car parked for too long on Cedar Avenue. On June 10, she went to Magistrates' Court to pay but was told it wasn't in the system and she'd have to come back.

Three weeks later, a colleague tried again on her behalf but the details of the offence still weren't available to staff. The woman was told to ring a Government number and did so several times, before being advised to call Police headquarters.

Eventually, she was given the number for the Police prosecutions office. She said: "The guy I spoke to said: 'Don't bother paying it'. He said: 'We won't come after you'."

But the law-abiding motorist wasn't prepared to let the matter lie. She asked to be contacted when the ticket appeared on the computer system and received a call on August 12, when she was finally able to clear the debt.

"I was perfectly happy to pay up," said the 46-year-old. "It was my fault; I deserved the ticket. It's just nobody seems to know who should enter the information on the system."

Shadow Attorney General Trevor Moniz told the House of Assembly last month that the lack of enforcement on parking tickets was "incredible".

"We must be the only country in the world to have an honour system for parking tickets," said the Deputy Opposition Leader. "You pay the ticket if you want to. If you don't pay the ticket, nobody cares."

Shadow Transport Minister Michael Fahy said yesterday that the huge backlog in unpaid fines was due to no enforcement.

"When was the last time there was a prosecution for non-payment of parking tickets? People know they can get away with not paying. The solution remains in tying the non-payment of tickets to licensing your vehicle."

Attorney General Kim Wilson announced in April that Government will bring in legislation in the next parliamentary session to clamp down on unpaid tickets.

A Government spokesman said last night: "The numbers of fines and payments processed daily throughout the period reported clearly indicates that the Courts Information System has not incurred any system outages.

"Citations for parking offences are issued through several different entities. The data for these tickets is not automatically populated in the Magistrates Court System and as such we rely on these entities to transfer the data in a timely manner in order to allow for payments to be processed. A solution is currently being worked on."