Motor vehicles bill passes with support of 8 independent senators

AKASH SAMA­ROO

The Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic (Amend­ment) Bill, 2026, has passed in the Sen­ate with the sup­port of eight of the nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors.

When the bill was put to a vote around 8.30 pm yes­ter­day, 23 sen­a­tors vot­ed in favour, six vot­ed against, and there was one ab­sten­tion.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr De­siree Mur­ray, who had ear­li­er rec­om­mend­ed ex­tend­ing the grace pe­ri­od for mo­torists to ad­dress ve­hi­cle de­fects to 21 and 42 days in­stead of the Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed three and sev­en days, was the sole ab­sten­tion.

All Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sen­a­tors vot­ed against the bill.

With pas­sage in the Up­per House, the leg­is­la­tion now awaits as­sent from Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo be­fore be­com­ing law.

The pri­ma­ry goal of this bill is to shift from a “fine-first” ap­proach to one that en­cour­ages com­pli­ance through warn­ings or a “grace pe­ri­od” for mi­nor me­chan­i­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive de­fects.

Mo­torists will be giv­en a three-day grace pe­ri­od to cor­rect of­fences in­clud­ing the ab­sence of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion lights for li­cence plates, miss­ing “Tare” or “MGW” mark­ings on com­mer­cial ve­hi­cles, ve­hi­cles with­out a horn or si­lencer, miss­ing re­flect­ing mir­rors, and ex­ces­sive smoke or vis­i­ble vapour emis­sions. A sev­en-day grace pe­ri­od will ap­ply to de­fec­tive fit­tings, in­clud­ing cracked or dam­aged wind­screens, as well as noisy ve­hi­cles, par­tic­u­lar­ly those with faulty muf­flers or ex­ces­sive­ly loud ex­haust sys­tems.

If a mo­torist re­pairs the de­fect and re­ports to a po­lice sta­tion or Li­cens­ing Of­fice for ver­i­fi­ca­tion with­in the pre­scribed time frame, they will re­ceive a cer­tifi­cate of com­pli­ance, and the mat­ter will be re­solved with­out a fine or de­mer­it points.

How­ev­er, if the de­fect is not reme­died with­in the al­lot­ted pe­ri­od, the warn­ing will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly con­vert in­to a Fixed Penal­ty No­tice, mak­ing the mo­torist li­able for the full fine.