1,700 tickets in 6 days: Minister says increase in fines due to ‘alarming’ incidence of lawlessness on roads

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our says Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to im­pose stiffer road traf­fic fines was dri­ven by ev­i­dence un­cov­ered af­ter tak­ing of­fice, in­sist­ing the scale of law­less­ness on the na­tion’s roads was far worse than what was un­der­stood dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign.

Ad­dress­ing crit­i­cism over why the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion had made an about-turn on its pre-elec­tion po­si­tion not to in­crease traf­fic fines, Za­k­our said once in Gov­ern­ment, ac­cess to de­tailed re­ports and en­force­ment da­ta paint­ed a dis­turb­ing pic­ture of wide­spread in­dis­ci­pline and weak com­pli­ance with ba­sic road laws.

“On the cam­paign trail, we did not have ac­cess to the op­er­a­tional da­ta, the sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta. But since as­sum­ing of­fice, we have ac­cess to all da­ta, and the law­less­ness is worse than what we thought, so the Gov­ern­ment had to act de­ci­sive­ly,” Za­k­our said at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) head­quar­ters in Ch­agua­nas.

Guardian Me­dia al­so ob­tained da­ta from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice yes­ter­day, show­ing that for the first week since the roll­out of the in­creased traf­fic fines, 1,758 var­i­ous traf­fic tick­ets were is­sued. For the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2025, 1,682 tick­ets were hand­ed out to of­fend­ers, while in 2024 it was 1,688.

Un­der the amend­ed Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act, 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 raised across the board.

As he al­so de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to in­crease fines for late dri­ver’s per­mit re­newals, Za­k­our point­ed to what he de­scribed as a “fright­en­ing” de­vel­op­ment.

“This is very se­ri­ous. In the last two days, close to 1,000 per­sons came in­to Li­cense Of­fice to re­new their dri­ver’s per­mits, which should have been done with­in the le­gal time frame. We are see­ing cas­es where per­sons are months or even years over­due.”

He in­sist­ed that the amend­ed leg­is­la­tion was rolled out and im­ple­ment­ed trans­par­ent­ly amid con­cerns from the pub­lic.

“I am hold­ing here the Fi­nance Bill, 2025, that was de­bat­ed in both hous­es of Par­lia­ment on De­cem­ber fifth and De­cem­ber ninth. Sec­tion 61a, right here. This was de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment, and I ac­tu­al­ly spoke on this on De­cem­ber ninth.”

Za­k­our again re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the in­creased fines were de­signed to raise rev­enue.

“We can­not be sub­ject to a pop­u­lar­i­ty con­test when lives are at stake, so the Gov­ern­ment act­ed. This is not a rev­enue ex­er­cise; if this works as in­tend­ed, the Gov­ern­ment will col­lect less be­cause there will be less vi­o­la­tions,” he said.

The min­is­ter, how­ev­er, not­ed that in the last two years alone, over ten mil­lion dol­lars in late re­new­al fees were col­lect­ed.

“In the last fi­nan­cial year, we re­ceived five mil­lion dol­lars in late dri­ving per­mit fees and nine mil­lion the year be­fore, so this is not new.”

The min­is­ter al­so ac­knowl­edged the chal­lenges ex­pe­ri­enced by the pub­lic at Li­cens­ing of­fices across the coun­try.

“Cur­rent­ly, we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some sys­tem chal­lenges at Li­cense of­fices where the sys­tems are go­ing of­fline. Yes­ter­day, it hap­pened a cou­ple of times for six or so min­utes. This is be­ing ad­dressed, but it is a sys­tem we in­her­it­ed.”

The min­is­ter al­so not­ed that the pre­vi­ous de­mer­it point sys­tem had failed to achieve its in­tend­ed ob­jec­tive of im­prov­ing road safe­ty.

“When ev­i­dence shows that penal­ties have lost their ef­fec­tive­ness and dan­ger­ous dri­ving per­sists, the Gov­ern­ment has to act.”

It comes even af­ter the po­lice record­ed a 12 per cent re­duc­tion in road fa­tal­i­ties for 2025 when com­pared to 2024.

Za­k­our as­sert­ed that un­der the de­mer­it point sys­tem launched in 2020 by the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, “road be­hav­iour re­mained un­changed.”

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns about po­lice ac­count­abil­i­ty dur­ing road traf­fic ex­er­cis­es, Za­k­our as­sured fur­ther clar­i­ty.

“Per­sons have brought to our at­ten­tion con­cerns re­gard­ing a cracked wind­screen and a blown light bulb, among oth­ers. This is be­ing dis­cussed, and I will have more on this soon.”

Za­k­our al­so an­nounced plans to in­tro­duce red light en­force­ment tech­nol­o­gy.

“Cam­eras will be placed at traf­fic in­ter­sec­tions through­out the coun­try and will take pho­tos of your ve­hi­cle break­ing the light. We are work­ing on that very soon.”