Ke­jan Haynes

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­fend­ed the surge of traf­fic tick­ets is­sued in re­cent days but says there will be no re­duc­tion in fines. How­ev­er, she said yes­ter­day that her Gov­ern­ment is prepar­ing to in­tro­duce a sys­tem to give dri­vers time to fix ve­hi­cle de­fects be­fore penal­ties take ef­fect.

In a state­ment post­ed on Twit­ter, the Prime Min­is­ter said the spike in vi­o­la­tions con­firms wide­spread dis­re­gard for the law, adding that many of those fined were not caught off guard but were al­ready aware of de­fects or ex­pired doc­u­men­ta­tion on their ve­hi­cles.

How­ev­er, she said she was cog­nisant of the peo­ple’s com­plaints, say­ing when she was sworn in as Prime Min­is­ter, she said, “I will nev­er be de­tached from your feel­ings and as­pi­ra­tions. I will nev­er do my own thing while the coun­try cries out for their needs. I will al­ways be lis­ten­ing. I will be fol­low­ing you. You will be my pri­or­i­ty. You must al­ways know that you have lead­ers who cares and un­der­stands your prob­lems.”

De­spite that com­ment, she stressed there would be no re­prieve on the in­creased penal­ties or en­force­ment, say­ing, “There will ab­solute­ly be NO RE­DUC­TION in traf­fic fines and strict en­force­ment will con­tin­ue un­til these re­forms are made… it does not mat­ter if you are UNC, PNM or any oth­er group­ing… if you break the traf­fic laws, ANY­BODY GETS IT!!!”

The PM promised Gov­ern­ment will move to Par­lia­ment in the com­ing weeks to in­tro­duce a Fixed Penal­ty No­tice Warn­ing Sys­tem, which will re­quire au­thor­i­ties to give mo­torists time to re­pair ve­hi­cle de­fects be­fore fines are en­forced. The pro­pos­al ap­plies to a range of of­fences list­ed in the Ninth Sched­ule, set­ting ei­ther a three-day or sev­en-day com­pli­ance pe­ri­od de­pend­ing on the sever­i­ty of the de­fect.

Dri­vers will have three days to cor­rect is­sues such as: miss­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion lights for num­ber plates at night, taxis with­out pas­sen­ger ca­pac­i­ty print­ed on the right front door, ve­hi­cles with­out Tare and Max­i­mum Gross Weight mark­ings, ve­hi­cles with­out si­lencers, unau­tho­rised lights or let­ter­ing, miss­ing head­lamps, park lights, tail lights, horns, rear-view mir­rors, no­tices for left-hand-dri­ve ve­hi­cles, ad­ver­tise­ments on taxi win­dows, and the ab­sence of a spare tyre in pub­lic ser­vice ve­hi­cles.

A sev­en-day warn­ing pe­ri­od will ap­ply to more se­ri­ous or po­ten­tial­ly haz­ardous de­fects, in­clud­ing dam­aged wind­screens and oth­er de­fec­tive fit­tings, ve­hi­cles emit­ting ex­ces­sive smoke or vapour, noisy ve­hi­cles, and those with bro­ken or non-func­tion­al wind­screen wipers.

Un­der the pro­posed sys­tem, penal­ties would on­ly take ef­fect if dri­vers fail to fix the iden­ti­fied prob­lem with­in the al­lowed time­frame.

Gov­ern­ment says the change is in­tend­ed to pro­tect law-abid­ing cit­i­zens while still main­tain­ing firm en­force­ment against gen­uine traf­fic delin­quen­cy.

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so re­vealed that Gov­ern­ment has been told that “a small mi­nor­i­ty of traf­fic war­dens, li­cens­ing of­fi­cers and TTPS of­fi­cers have been abus­ing the tick­et­ing sys­tem and ter­ror­is­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.” She said both delin­quent dri­vers and any mis­be­hav­ing of­fi­cers will be ad­dressed.