The transport ministry has instructed the road transport department and the information technology services department to rectify matters after motorists were left without valid road tax certificates despite paying their road tax, ministry sources said on Thursday.

The sources told the Cyprus Mail that the issue had arisen because of an issue encountered during payments made through online platform JCC, wherein the procedure “would not be completed”.

In essence, while the money left taxpayers’ accounts, the system failed to inform the road transport department that the payment had been made.

In some cases, the sources said, the money was then returned to the taxpayers’ accounts after the process could not be completed, though even then, people may have still believed that they had paid their road tax, “as most people are not constantly checking their bank accounts”.

Given this to be the case, those who had suffered the issue were almost all unaware of the situation until being pulled over by the police and fined after their cars were flagged as untaxed by the road transport department’s database.

In addition, the sources said, when they went to pay their road tax for the second time, they were fined 10 per cent of the value of their road tax by the road transport department for missing a payment.

The sources said that as such, instructions have been issued to both the road transport department and the information technology services department to “rectify the situation” to make sure that people who paid their road tax have this fact reflected on the database, and that “such a thing can never happen again”.

In addition, the ministry has also contacted the legal service with the aim of initiating procedures to return money to those who were erroneously fined, both by the police and by the road transport department.

It also requested that those to whom money was returned by JCC who now attempt to repay their road tax do not receive the 10 per cent fine for missing a payment.