Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

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For­mer min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan says the Gov­ern­ment’s new traf­fic fine regime is not fo­cused on chang­ing the cul­ture of dri­vers, warn­ing that the pol­i­cy pri­ori­tis­es rev­enue col­lec­tion over road safe­ty and is al­ready hav­ing dam­ag­ing so­cial and in­sti­tu­tion­al con­se­quences.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on the im­pact of the re­cent­ly in­creased fines yes­ter­day, Sinanan said the Gov­ern­ment has fun­da­men­tal­ly mis­un­der­stood the pur­pose of traf­fic en­force­ment, shift­ing away from be­hav­iour­al change to­ward what he de­scribed as a “rev­enue-dri­ven ap­proach” that risks deep­en­ing law­less­ness rather than curb­ing it.

Road Traf­fic fines were in­creased on De­cem­ber 22nd, but the de­ci­sion was on­ly made pub­lic on Christ­mas Day. The fines have been in­creased by 100 per cent and come in­to ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1..

“The pri­or­i­ty has shift­ed from road safe­ty to rais­ing mon­ey,” Sinanan said.

“And once rev­enue be­comes the ob­jec­tive, then the sys­tem ac­tu­al­ly de­pends on peo­ple break­ing the law. That is the op­po­site of what traf­fic en­force­ment is sup­posed to achieve.”

Sinanan, who spear­head­ed the U-TURN traf­fic man­age­ment pro­gramme dur­ing his tenure, said the new fines—some run­ning in­to thou­sands of dol­lars—are dis­con­nect­ed from the re­al­i­ties of the pop­u­la­tion and will not de­ter dan­ger­ous dri­ving.

“If you charge peo­ple fig­ures they sim­ply can­not af­ford, they’re not go­ing to pay,” he said.

“They will con­tin­ue to dri­ve, con­tin­ue to break the law, and the State will be left with a moun­tain of un­paid fines and no im­prove­ment in road safe­ty.”

He warned that the coun­try is al­ready fa­mil­iar with this out­come.

Be­fore U-TURN, Sinanan not­ed, more than 130,000 traf­fic mat­ters clogged the courts, with of­fend­ers open­ly boast­ing about ac­cu­mu­lat­ing tick­ets with­out ever pay­ing them.

“Is that where we are head­ing again?” he asked.

“Peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go will tell you proud­ly they get 10 tick­ets and nev­er pay one. Rais­ing fines to $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 doesn’t change that re­al­i­ty.”

Ac­cord­ing to Sinanan, the flaw in the UNC-led ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ap­proach is its over­re­liance on mon­e­tary penal­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly on a so­ci­ety marked by eco­nom­ic in­equal­i­ty.

“A wealthy man will say, ‘I could drink and dri­ve, I could take that chance, I could pay that fine,’” he said.

“So, who ex­act­ly is be­ing pun­ished? Cer­tain­ly not the peo­ple who can af­ford it.”

He con­trast­ed this with the U-TURN sys­tem, which fo­cused on de­mer­it points and li­cence sus­pen­sion rather than fines, mak­ing en­force­ment un­avoid­able re­gard­less of in­come.

“When points ac­cu­mu­late and your dri­ver’s per­mit is sus­pend­ed, that is some­thing you can­not buy your way out of,” Sinanan said. “You can’t re­new your per­mit, you can’t do trans­ac­tions at the Li­cens­ing Of­fice, and the sys­tem will flag you im­me­di­ate­ly.”

Sinanan al­so crit­i­cised what he de­scribed as the ef­fec­tive dis­man­tling of the in­te­grat­ed en­force­ment frame­work that once linked the Po­lice Ser­vice, Li­cens­ing Of­fice and Ju­di­cia­ry.

“That sys­tem was de­signed to close loop­holes,” he said.

“Now we are mov­ing back­wards, weak­en­ing en­force­ment while pre­tend­ing that high­er fines alone will solve the prob­lem.”

He cau­tioned that the so­cial im­pact of the new fines could be se­vere, par­tic­u­lar­ly for work­ing-class dri­vers who de­pend on ve­hi­cles for their liveli­hoods.

“You are crim­i­nal­is­ing pover­ty,” Sinanan said. “A man who needs to dri­ve to work, to car­ry his chil­dren to school, is now fac­ing fines that can crip­ple his house­hold, while the ha­bit­u­al and wealthy of­fend­er car­ries on as usu­al.”

Be­yond road safe­ty, Sinanan warned that the pol­i­cy risks erod­ing re­spect for the law it­self.

“When peo­ple see laws be­ing used main­ly as a mon­ey-mak­ing tool, they stop re­spect­ing them,” he said.

“That doesn’t just af­fect traf­fic of­fences. It af­fects the en­tire cul­ture of law and or­der in the coun­try.”

He ar­gued that true suc­cess in traf­fic en­force­ment would mean the State col­lects lit­tle to no rev­enue be­cause com­pli­ance is high.

“Our end game should be that no­body is break­ing the law,” Sinanan said.

“If the Gov­ern­ment is count­ing on fines to bal­ance its books, then some­thing is fun­da­men­tal­ly wrong.”

As road fa­tal­i­ties con­tin­ue to con­cern the pub­lic, Sinanan called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­think its strat­e­gy and re­turn to poli­cies cen­tred on be­hav­iour­al change, tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven en­force­ment and li­cence ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“Road safe­ty is not a cash cow. It is about sav­ing lives. And right now, this coun­try is pay­ing the price for get­ting that pri­or­i­ty wrong,” he said.