Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Trans­port Min­istry, which will very soon launch a road safe­ty cam­paign, is al­so work­ing on in­tro­duc­ing a check­ered band maxi taxi sys­tem pro­vid­ing reg­u­lat­ed pub­lic trans­port to un­der­served rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

And the min­istry is al­so speak­ing to the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to add road safe­ty to the school cur­ricu­lum, to ed­u­cate peo­ple on road safe­ty at a young age.

Trans­port Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our re­vealed this in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives yes­ter­day while con­tribut­ing to de­bate on an Op­po­si­tion mo­tion call­ing for road safe­ty pro­gramme to pre­vent loss of life.

Za­k­our said an­oth­er im­mi­nent project in­volves 2,000 kilo­me­tres of roads across T&T, which will be as­sessed to iden­ti­fy high-risk ar­eas and sup­port tar­get­ed safe­ty im­prove­ments to pro­tect road users.

Za­k­our said the Ve­hi­cle Main­te­nance Com­pa­ny of T&T (VM­COTT) has fixed 52 po­lice ve­hi­cles that were parked up in pri­vate garages for two years. One ve­hi­cle was fixed in an hour and the oth­er in just an hour-plus. Za­k­our ques­tioned what oc­curred when Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les was a VM­COTT board mem­ber. Za­k­our said he’d re­veal what oc­curred when he speaks in the mid-year re­view.

Op­po­si­tion MP Do­minic Ro­main, re­lat­ing the death of his friend Michael King in a re­cent col­li­sion with a ve­hi­cle dri­ven by a 22-year-old, called for King’s death not to be in vain and for at­ten­tion to be paid to road safe­ty.

He said King’s wife, who un­der­went sev­er­al surg­eries in the wake of the ac­ci­dent, is still in re­cov­ery and that the cou­ple had four chil­dren who are now fa­ther­less at mile­stone marks in their lives in em­ploy­ment and ed­u­ca­tion.

“His 11-year-old daugh­ter, who, when her SEA re­sults come, will prob­a­bly see oth­er stu­dents like her­self cel­e­brat­ing with their fa­thers, and hers will not be there. As some­one who grew up in a sin­gle-par­ent home my­self—hav­ing lost my fa­ther when I was a year and ten months—I know it’s dif­fi­cult,” Ro­main added.

“Mr King’s fam­i­ly is strug­gling as they’re seek­ing clo­sure giv­en the cir­cum­stances of this ac­ci­dent. Clo­sure can on­ly come from the knowl­edge that his death wasn’t in vain, that the cir­cum­stances that would have led to that 22-year-old los­ing con­trol of that ve­hi­cle wasn’t be­cause of fool­ish­ness, but just hap­pened,” Ro­main said.

“The King fam­i­ly, as de­vout Je­ho­vah’s Wit­ness­es, would find com­fort in the scrip­tures. But still, they’re look­ing for that clo­sure they may nev­er find and there are so many sit­u­a­tions like this.”

Ro­main added, “Peo­ple strug­gle for years and the ones who cause the ac­ci­dents move on. I’m sure that 22-year- old is prob­a­bly back out on the roads…So as MPs, we need to get it right on road safe­ty and en­sure we get the best poli­cies to re­duce ac­ci­dents.”

Ro­main ques­tioned the Prime Min­is­ter’s about-face from Op­po­si­tion days—when she spoke of lov­ing sup­port­ers—to re­cent­ly, when, as Prime Min­is­ter, she said if peo­ple want­ed to dri­ve reck­less­ly and kill them­selves that was fine by her.

Ro­main added, “That’s love UNC style...”