Owners face prosecution

Drivers of vehicles five years and older who have not gone for inspection can now face prosecution.

Yesterday  the Senate passed the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic (Amendment) Regulation, which would impose sanctions for non-compliance with the law. And  Works Minister Frankie Khan warned that there would be no grace period for offending motorists (those who have not had their cars inspected). The passage of the regulations clears the way for the law to be completely enforceable, by imposing specific sanctions for those who do not have their cars inspected biannually.

UNC Senator Robin Montano argued that without a grace period there would be much “confusion and hardship” for affected motorists. Montano noted that many people had not had their cars inspected because of the lacuna in the law. “There would be long lines...and inevitable confusion,” he predicted. But Works Minister Franklin Khan said the issue of a grace period “did not arise” because the law validating the inspection of  cars was passed since 2001.  “It was effectively the law. Why is it in the society where the law is valid..everybody sits down..every single car owner refuses to inspect their cars when the law was in effect because there was no punitive action, that we could go to a magistrate’s court and prosecute people” he said.

Khan said therein lay the societal problem. He said the law was in effect and therefore people should have had their vehicles inspected. However Khan hinted that administratively the Government would give motorists a grace period in which to comply with the law. He stated: “But We are not foolish people at the Licensing Authority. Tomorrow morning, the police wouldn’t go out and charge everybody. Operationally there would be an issue of what you manage on a day to day basis”. He said if Government said that there is a six month grace period for people to have their cars inspected, nobody would go for inspections in the first five months and then there would be a mad rush in the last month, with serious bottlenecking. He added that the problem was cultural- “a lack of adherence for law and order”.

Khan said on Friday he would be having a meeting with all the stakeholders in road safety and traffic management — the Police, Licensing Authority, Traffic Management Branch of the Ministry of Works and Transport, the Insurance Companies (“who are major stakeholders because the more accidents we have, the more premiums go up”). Earlier in the sitting Khan said the owners of garages had complained to him that while they invested a lot of money in setting up their businesses, no one was coming for the cars to be inspected because they faced no punitive action.