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Monday, August 11, 2025

Defending Works and Transport

by

Guardian Media
2383 days ago
20190131

Trevor Su­dama

My at­ten­tion was drawn to a com­men­tary in the Guardian of 23/1/19 head­lined "Mo­torists are not be­ing pe­nalised" writ­ten by one Marvin Gon­za­les who is head of the Le­gal Ser­vices Unit in the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. His com­ments were in re­sponse to a col­umn which I had penned on 18/1/19.

His re­sponse, how­ev­er, does not re­fute the cen­tral point of my col­umn which is that the gen­er­al mo­tor­ing pub­lic con­tribute heav­i­ly to the Trea­sury by way of di­rect tax­a­tion in­clud­ing in­creas­es in the price of fu­el, the im­po­si­tion of a pletho­ra of fees for trans­ac­tions at the Li­cens­ing Of­fice as well as the levy­ing of heavy fines for in­frac­tions of traf­fic reg­u­la­tions, whether ma­jor or mi­nor ($90 m in 2018 alone). In re­turn, mo­torists are sub­ject­ed to gen­er­al­ly de­plorable road con­di­tions through­out the coun­try. A mo­torist buys a ve­hi­cle and makes a con­sid­er­able out­lay from his per­son­al fi­nances not to have it parked in a garage at home but for it to be dri­ven on the roads which, on the whole, are pa­thet­i­cal­ly sub­stan­dard when com­pared to roads even in To­ba­go, Grena­da or Bar­ba­dos.

The head of the Le­gal Ser­vices Unit has not ad­dressed this con­tention nor has he even men­tioned the no­to­ri­ous­ly de­bil­i­tat­ing road con­di­tions which are a ma­jor con­trib­u­to­ry fac­tor to road ac­ci­dents, some of which are fa­tal. How­ev­er, it is pos­si­ble that this se­nior bu­reau­crat does not dri­ve him­self but is chauf­feur-dri­ven. He there­fore would not ap­pre­ci­ate the dan­gers in­volved in try­ing to avoid the nu­mer­ous pot­holes or in dri­ving over uniden­ti­fied de­pres­sions and un­even sur­faces on roads of poor de­sign or the added anx­i­ety ex­pe­ri­enced in ne­go­ti­at­ing a nar­row road­way part of which has slipped away or the vir­tu­al ab­sence of white lines, prop­er sig­nage and street light­ing which would as­sist dri­vers, par­tic­u­lar­ly at night and dur­ing pe­ri­ods of rain­fall.

There are two re­cent in­stances in which it is al­leged that road deaths had been caused by the dere­lic­tion on the part of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. A young doc­tor from Cen­tral died a cou­ple of months ago at the Fac­to­ry Road Ex­it on the Solomon Ho­choy High­way, Ch­agua­nas, be­cause those who vis­it­ed the scene claimed that there was no light­ing, uniden­ti­fi­able sig­nage and road mark­ings and lack of vis­i­bil­i­ty of the con­crete bar­ri­ers. The oth­er in­stance was when a young mo­tor­cy­clist from La Ro­maine lost his life at the in­ter­sec­tion of Dum­fries Road and the S S Erin Road, Debe, in the vicin­i­ty of the over­pass. I my­self can tes­ti­fy that there was no stop sign, no road mark­ing and no street light­ing at the in­ter­sec­tion.

I am ac­cused by Mr Gon­za­les of be­ing guilty of "many mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions and gross dis­tor­tions on the holis­tic work pro­gramme of the MOWT". In his ar­ti­cle I ex­pect­ed him to iden­ti­fy these 'mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions and gross dis­tor­tions' in my col­umn of 18/1/19. As a lawyer, which I pre­sume Mr Gon­za­les is, he should be aware that in a court of law one has to sup­port ac­cu­sa­tions by spe­cif­ic ev­i­dence which, if not forth­com­ing, elic­its a no-case ver­dict. Then per­haps the head of the Le­gal Ser­vices Unit has con­fined him­self to ad­min­is­tra­tive work and pub­lic re­la­tions.

Al­most his whole com­men­tary of 23/1/19 was an elab­o­rate pub­lic re­la­tions state­ment on how well the MOWT has im­ple­ment­ed the many road traf­fic laws and reg­u­la­tions in­clud­ing those deal­ing with seat­belts, breath­a­lyz­er, mo­bile phones, and speed guns as well as mak­ing it eas­i­er for the pay­ment of fees and fines. The hith­er­to lethar­gic MOWT has mount­ed a pub­lic re­la­tions of­fen­sive with a cost­ly ten-page ad­ver­tise­ment in the Sun­day Ex­press and the Sun­day News­day, which will be ad­dressed by me lat­er.

There is no doubt that the en­force­ment of traf­fic reg­u­la­tions would have had some de­ter­rent ef­fect on er­rant dri­vers but to what de­gree. In my col­umn, I not­ed that in 2018 alone 38,000 speed­ing tick­ets were is­sued. These fig­ures do not in­clude the tens of thou­sands who would have bro­ken the speed lim­it but were not caught. One can there­fore con­clude that en­force­ment of speed con­trol reg­u­la­tions may not be hav­ing the de­sired ef­fect and there­fore the min­istry needs to look at more ef­fec­tive pre­ven­tive mea­sures for eg, the manda­to­ry in­stal­la­tion of speed alert de­vices on ve­hi­cles or a vig­or­ous pub­lic re­la­tions pro­gramme to em­pha­sise the minis­cule sav­ing in time when speed­ing for short dis­tances as is the case in Trinidad.

If Mr Gon­za­les is of the opin­ion, as in­di­cat­ed in the head­line of his com­men­tary, that mo­torists are not be­ing pe­nalised, per­haps he may wish to have the ben­e­fit of an in­de­pen­dent ran­dom poll of the views and sen­ti­ments of mo­torists na­tion­wide. Fi­nal­ly, I have not is­sued any di­rect or in­di­rect call for protest ac­tion by mo­torists. I mere­ly re­marked on their tol­er­ance and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that, in Spar­row’s words, "dey like it so".


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