Op­po­si­tion mem­bers are stand­ing unit­ed against the Gov­ern­ment’s cam­paign promise to re­move the de­mer­it point sys­tem. 

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les said any amend­ments to the law must be done with con­sul­ta­tion. Her stance fol­lows point­ed warn­ings from Op­po­si­tion MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor and for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, who both crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment’s plan as reck­less and dan­ger­ous. They were speak­ing at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion at Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Gon­za­les, a for­mer min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, said the sys­tem—in­tro­duced un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion —serves as a crit­i­cal tool to de­ter reck­less dri­ving and save lives.

“Why would some­one be so op­posed to a de­mer­it point sys­tem?” Gon­za­les asked. “Some peo­ple re­gard it as puni­tive, but it’s a sim­ple sys­tem that tracks the be­hav­iour of dri­vers on the road.”

He ex­plained that dri­vers ac­crue de­mer­it points when they com­mit traf­fic vi­o­la­tions such as DUI, not wear­ing seat­belts or reck­less dri­ving. These points are logged once a fixed penal­ty is paid, and ac­cu­mu­lat­ing enough points over a three-year pe­ri­od trig­gers warn­ings and, even­tu­al­ly, a manda­to­ry dri­ver re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­gramme.

“Two or three years af­ter the sys­tem was in­tro­duced, the sta­tis­tics were stag­ger­ing,” Gon­za­les said. “You have peo­ple in this coun­try dri­ving around with over 200 de­mer­it points on their records. That means these peo­ple are com­mit­ting se­ri­ous traf­fic vi­o­la­tions al­most every week.”

He added, “How do we feel as cit­i­zens know­ing we share the road with dri­vers like that? For­get be­ing politi­cians—how do we feel as peo­ple?”

He ac­cused Gov­ern­ment of mak­ing a pop­ulist move with­out any al­ter­na­tive plan to im­prove road safe­ty.

“We are say­ing this sys­tem is not per­fect. But to re­voke it whole­sale is telling the coun­try we are go­ing back to the dark and dan­ger­ous days of 250 to 300 road fa­tal­i­ties a year.”

Gon­za­les added that the sys­tem had earned Trinidad and To­ba­go in­ter­na­tion­al praise for its pos­i­tive im­pact on road safe­ty.

Al-Rawi, who played a key role in de­vel­op­ing and im­ple­ment­ing the sys­tem, agreed that abol­ish­ing de­mer­it points would be short-sight­ed, but stressed the penal­ties for traf­fic of­fences would still ex­ist in law.

“The re­moval of de­mer­it points isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the re­moval of the sanc­tion,” Al-Rawi said. “There’s still a sanc­tion un­der the par­ent leg­is­la­tion, not just the Ninth Sched­ule. Even if you elim­i­nate the de­mer­it points, the law still al­lows a penal­ty to ap­ply.”

Al-Rawi urged the me­dia and pub­lic to scru­ti­nise whether re­cent fa­tal ac­ci­dents in­volved dri­vers who had re­ceived de­mer­it no­tices.

“Let’s get the facts and see whether the sys­tem made our roads safer.”

Over the week­end there were two ma­jor road ac­ci­dents in which five peo­ple in­clud­ing a mi­nor lost their lives.