Transport ministry refuses request for clear breakdown of new traffic fines

Ke­jan Haynes

The Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion has re­fused a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest that would have clear­ly ex­plained which traf­fic of­fences now car­ry high­er fines, de­spite grow­ing pub­lic con­fu­sion over the re­cent changes.

The re­quest asked the min­istry to pro­vide one clear, con­sol­i­dat­ed list show­ing each of­fence, the old fine, the new fine and the le­gal ref­er­ence, so mo­torists would not have to search through mul­ti­ple le­gal no­tices to un­der­stand what now ap­plies.

In­stead, the min­istry replied yes­ter­day that the in­for­ma­tion was al­ready pub­licly avail­able, re­ly­ing on sec­tion 12(c) of the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act.

“Pur­suant to sec­tion 12(c) of the FOIA you are not en­ti­tled to re­quest ac­cess to the doc­u­ments/in­for­ma­tion de­tailed at Nos. 1, 2 and 3 in your ap­pli­ca­tion as these doc­u­ments/in­for­ma­tion are al­ready avail­able for pub­lic in­spec­tion on the Dig­i­tal Leg­isla­tive Li­brary and pub­lished in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gazette ac­cord­ing­ly,” the let­ter said.

While the amend­ed fines are pub­lished in the Gazette, the le­gal no­tices list on­ly item num­bers and dol­lar amounts, with­out nam­ing the of­fences them­selves. This means mem­bers of the pub­lic must cross-ref­er­ence mul­ti­ple sched­ules and laws to fig­ure out which of­fence at­tracts which fine.

The FOIA re­quest was made af­ter sev­er­al le­gal no­tices pub­lished on De­cem­ber 25, 2025 in­creased fines across dozens of of­fences, with amounts such as $1,000 raised to $2,000 and $750 dou­bled to $1,500, with­out set­ting out the cor­re­spond­ing of­fences in the no­tices.

The min­istry’s re­sponse did not say whether it has pre­pared, or plans to pre­pare, a sim­ple pub­lic guide ex­plain­ing the changes.

Con­cerns about poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion were raised in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dr Amery Browne, who said the lack of clear in­for­ma­tion had fu­elled sus­pi­cion and con­fu­sion.

“The oth­er fac­tor in all of this, un­for­tu­nate­ly, the good min­is­ter didn't suf­fi­cient­ly ad­dress it in his pi­lot­ing, is the pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion around this mat­ter," Browne said.

"The gov­ern­ment has not dis­tin­guished it­self in this de­part­ment. Maybe with one or two mi­nor ex­cep­tions. But on this is­sue, it's an un­mit­i­gat­ed dis­as­ter,” Browne con­tin­ued. “And when that space, no one is speak­ing, the of­fi­cial voic­es are qui­et, spec­u­la­tion ris­es, and then you have am­a­teur hour, your lit­tle sideshows and con­men and dif­fer­ent per­sons come in and try to in­flate.”

“In­creas­ing the age of used ve­hi­cles in­to Trinidad and To­ba­go while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ratch­et­ing up all of these fines and si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly mo­ti­vat­ing and re­ward­ing and dri­ving po­lice of­fi­cers to go out there and is­sue these tick­ets, it ap­pears to all and sundry that it’s a set­up, a trea­sure hunt, where the trea­sure is be­ing found in the pock­ets of the or­di­nary cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go,” Browne said.

Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our has pre­vi­ous­ly said the tougher fines were in­tro­duced af­ter the Gov­ern­ment gained ac­cess to en­force­ment da­ta show­ing wide­spread in­dis­ci­pline on the na­tion’s roads, which he said was worse than pre­vi­ous­ly un­der­stood.