Victims of ‘uninsured’ accidents wait in vain

A San Fernando-based attorney filed a lawsuit last week against the Ministry of Finance and the Board of Inland Revenue, in what is expected to be a landmark decision, to compel government to set-up the long-awaited Motor Insurance Bureau (MIB) so that the $1.6 billion already in the Accident Victims Compensation Fund (AVCF), which was set-up in 2008 by the late Prime Minister Patrick Manning, could be paid to the suffering victims or relatives of the deceased.

In 2015, the Auditor General’s report on Public Accounts stated that $158,268,500 million was collected in that year as IPT from vehicle owners who took out insurance policies for their vehicles, and was added to the AVCF, bringing the total collected since 2008 when it was introduced, to $1,62 billion. In the normal course of things, injured victims in “uninsured” vehicular accidents, have no compensation to get, hence the reason Manning had introduced the AVCF.

On Thursday last, Justice Ricky Rahim granted leave to attorney Asaf Hosein to seek judicial review of the Ministry of Finance and the Board of Inland Revenue’s failure to explain why the MIB has not been set up so compensation can be paid to victims of “uninsured” accidents. In order for the money to be paid from the AVCF, the MIB or some form of it with statutory regulations, must be set up and that has not happened since 2008.

One such accident that was recently dealt with by the High Court was that of the families of two mothers – Joatha Philbert, 41, and Cynthia Corridon, 54, of Never Dirty, Morvant – whose daughters died in a car accident in October 2010. The daughters, Arsha Philbert, 20, and Oniesha Victoria Lucess, 26, were travelling in a taxi driven by James Eastmond who had no taxi badge and no driver’s permit and therefore was not covered by insurance.

Arsha and Oneisha were thrown out of the car when, upon reaching the Mausica intersection, Eastmond had failed to stop at a red traffic light. In May 2015, a Master of the High Court awarded more than $600,000 in compensation in a negligence lawsuit to the two mothers.

However, no money could be paid to the mothers because of the uninsured status of the vehicle.

Three years ago the law lords of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England in frowning upon the refusal of the then Government to set-up the required MIB to facilitate awarding of compensation to such victims, stated, “The Board recognises that there remains a serious problem about innocent victims suffering bodily injury or property damage as a result of the negligence of uninsured drivers.”