DEREK ACHONG

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has firm­ly dis­missed crit­i­cism over its move to dou­ble the fines for dozens of traf­fic of­fences from Jan­u­ary next year.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, sev­er­al Cab­i­net mem­bers, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, de­fend­ed the move, which was an­nounced in a le­gal no­tice pub­lished in the Gazette on Christ­mas Day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that the move would have no im­pact on law-abid­ing cit­i­zens who fol­low road traf­fic laws.

“The on­ly peo­ple who will be af­fect­ed are peo­ple who break the law. So if you can’t op­er­ate your ve­hi­cle with­in the lim­its of the law, you will have to pay the fines,” she said.

“If you don’t want to get hung, you don’t com­mit mur­der; if you don’t want to be im­pris­oned for life, you don’t com­mit rape. So if you don’t want to pay the traf­fic fines, sim­ply dri­ve with­in the law,” she added.

Tak­ing own­er­ship of the de­ci­sion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that it was in re­sponse to er­rant dri­vers con­tin­u­ing to breach road traf­fic laws even af­ter her Gov­ern­ment scrapped the much-ma­ligned de­mer­it points sys­tem.

She stat­ed that some cit­i­zens had a habit of mis­tak­ing le­nien­cy as a li­cence to keep break­ing the law.

“I have seen it over this Christ­mas where there has been a dis­re­gard for the fire­works law,” she said.

She not­ed that an out­right ban may be im­ple­ment­ed if such ac­tion con­tin­ues.

“Sim­i­lar­ly, we re­moved the traf­fic de­mer­it points sys­tem, and some per­sons took that as a per­mit to abuse le­nien­cy and break the laws on the roads,” she said.

“So the fines have been in­creased be­cause some peo­ple’s lack of re­spect for the law and sub­par in­tel­li­gence lev­els sim­ply can’t ac­cept kind­ness and mer­cy; they can on­ly op­er­ate law­ful­ly un­der fear of pun­ish­ment,” she added.

The Le­gal No­tice pub­lished on Christ­mas Day amends the Ninth Sched­ule of the Act, rais­ing penal­ties across dozens of of­fences, in­clud­ing speed­ing, dan­ger­ous dri­ving-re­lat­ed breach­es, doc­u­men­ta­tion of­fences, and oth­er road traf­fic vi­o­la­tions.

Un­der the amend­ments, fines pre­vi­ous­ly set at $1,000 have been in­creased to $2,000; $750 fines dou­bled to $1,500; $300 fines raised to $600; and $450 fines in­creased to $900.

In oth­er cas­es, high­er penal­ties were ad­just­ed up­ward, in­clud­ing $2,000 fines in­creased to $4,000; and tiered penal­ties for re­peat of­fences were raised across the board.

Based on a re­view of the amend­ed sched­ule, nu­mer­ous in­di­vid­ual traf­fic of­fences now car­ry fines that are dou­ble their pre­vi­ous amounts, with sev­er­al oth­ers in­creased be­yond 100 per cent.

The changes were not out­lined dur­ing the 2025–2026 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion and were not in­clud­ed in the Fi­nance Bill passed ear­li­er this month.

The Le­gal No­tice states that the amend­ments come in­to force on Jan­u­ary 1.

But yes­ter­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so sought to re­spond to claims that she pre­vi­ous­ly ad­vo­cat­ed for a re­duc­tion in such fines while serv­ing as op­po­si­tion leader in 2024.

She was care­ful to note that her pre­vi­ous com­ments were based on dri­vers be­ing made to pay fines while still ac­cu­mu­lat­ing de­mer­it points at that time.

“I spoke about the fact that you were be­ing dou­bly pun­ished by hav­ing to pay fines and al­so ac­cu­mu­lat­ing de­mer­it points,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

“The de­mer­it points have been re­moved (ex­cept for drunk dri­ving and reck­less dri­ving), and on­ly the fines re­main,” she added.

She said her Gov­ern­ment was main­ly con­cerned with pro­tect­ing the safe­ty of cit­i­zens.

“If any cit­i­zen wants to break the law and dri­ve reck­less­ly and kill them­selves on the road, that’s fine by me; the prob­lem is that they usu­al­ly kill in­no­cent law-abid­ing cit­i­zens along with them­selves,” she said.

Not a rev­enue-gen­er­at­ing mea­sure

In a post on his Face­book page, ti­tled “Who The Cap Fits!”, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, who serves as Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, took aim at Op­po­si­tion mem­bers who crit­i­cised the move.

“You can­not fool the peo­ple again with your pa­thet­ic at­tempt to scan­dalise a car­ing Prime Min­is­ter and gov­ern­ment,” Padarath said.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our, who signed the no­tice based on his dis­cre­tion un­der the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act, re­ject­ed any con­cerns over the tim­ing of the an­nounce­ment.

Za­k­our point­ed out that the no­tice was signed ear­li­er this month and sub­mit­ted to the Gov­ern­ment Print­ery to be gazetted, with the lat­ter de­cid­ing when pub­li­ca­tion was to be ef­fect­ed along­side oth­er un­re­lat­ed no­tices.

He al­so re­ject­ed claims that the move was aimed at rev­enue gen­er­a­tion.

“The penal­ties are not de­signed to pun­ish or over­whelm cit­i­zens but are de­signed to pre­vent tragedy and dis­cour­age be­hav­iours that have left so many fam­i­lies griev­ing and too many lives shat­tered,” he added.

He point­ed out that if the in­creased fines served their pur­pose in de­ter­ring ir­re­spon­si­ble and un­law­ful con­duct, it would in fact mean a re­duc­tion in rev­enue for the Gov­ern­ment as few­er tick­ets would be is­sued by law en­force­ment of­fi­cers.

Op­po­si­tion ac­cus­es PM of flip-flop­ping

Ear­li­er yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion mem­bers con­demned the move.

Re­spond­ing to the no­tice on so­cial me­dia, Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young crit­i­cised Per­sad-Bisses­sar for al­leged­ly chang­ing from her pre­vi­ous po­si­tion on the fines.

“So Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in op­po­si­tion, said traf­fic fines are too high, and she would re­duce them. As soon as she is PM on Christ­mas Day, she rais­es traf­fic fines by 100 per cent and says noth­ing,” he said.

Arou­ca/Lopinot MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les, who serves as Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip in Par­lia­ment, crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to of­fi­cial­ly an­nounce the in­creas­es.

Stat­ing that it was not raised in the Bud­get or Fi­nance Bill, Gon­za­les said: “Where was the an­nounce­ment at a post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence or press re­lease? Where were the ju­nior min­is­te­r­i­al blog­gers with no re­al port­fo­lio?”

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert al­so made a sim­i­lar state­ment on his X ac­count.

“Be­fore the 2025 elec­tion, KPB promised to low­er ex­ist­ing tax­es, in­tro­duce no new tax­es, re­duce fines, and cre­ate jobs. The op­po­site oc­curred!” Im­bert said.

But while the Op­po­si­tion crit­i­cised the move, it was wel­comed by road safe­ty NGO Ar­rive Alive.

In a brief in­ter­view, the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s pres­i­dent Sharon In­gle­field said: “We sup­port any proac­tive ap­proach to road safe­ty, which means en­force­ment and en­hanced pol­i­cy and law.”

In­gle­field sug­gest­ed that the in­crease may have been in­tro­duced to bol­ster the ef­fect of road traf­fic of­fences with the re­moval of the de­mer­it points sys­tem.

“It (de­mer­it points sys­tem) was im­per­fect, but it was a start to im­prov­ing the pol­i­cy and laws to pro­tect lives and re­duce the num­ber of crash­es on the road,” In­gle­field said.

“This is again a step in the right di­rec­tion. There are too many pre­ventable crash­es and too many lives be­ing lost on the na­tion’s road­ways,” she added.