Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.Lee@Cnc3.co.tt

Stake­hold­ers for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties in this coun­try wel­come the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port’s (MoWT) amend­ments to the De­mer­it Points Sys­tem, which is out­lined in the Ninth Sched­ule of the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic (Amend­ment) Act, 2017.

“I feel this is won­der­ful that the Gov­ern­ment has placed its fo­cus on peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties and the prob­lem that they get when seek­ing park­ing,” Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer at Caribbean Sign Lan­guage Cen­tre Nicole Paul said.

In a me­dia re­lease is­sued on Mon­day, the min­istry an­nounced that mo­torists who fail to ob­serve re­stric­tions on the use of a dis­abil­i­ty park­ing per­mit in a dis­abil­i­ty park­ing zone or dis­play a can­celled or ex­pired per­mit will be fined $2,000 and lose three de­mer­it points. Those found de­stroy­ing, mu­ti­lat­ing, de­fac­ing, or al­ter­ing a dis­abil­i­ty park­ing per­mit or fail­ing to ad­here to any con­di­tion for the use of a dis­abil­i­ty park­ing per­mit as reg­is­tered will face the same penal­ties. Ac­cord­ing to the MoWT, peo­ple who fail to dis­play a dis­abil­i­ty park­ing per­mit will be fined $750, and those who fail to re­turn an in­valid dis­abil­i­ty park­ing per­mit will be fined $500. No points will be de­duct­ed for these vi­o­la­tions.

The De­mer­it Points Sys­tem was im­ple­ment­ed in 2020, and it was cre­at­ed to mon­i­tor and im­prove the dri­ving be­hav­iour of mo­torists.

While Paul and oth­er stake­hold­ers ac­knowl­edged the move as a step in the right di­rec­tion, they al­so ex­pressed ad­di­tion­al con­cerns. She said be­fore the min­istry’s mea­sures have a pos­i­tive ef­fect, the mes­sage has to reach the tar­get au­di­ence.

Paul ques­tioned how the new in­for­ma­tion would get to the deaf com­mu­ni­ty.

“Be­cause many times the sto­ries are end­less of deaf peo­ple go­ing not on­ly to the min­istry but al­so go­ing to the hos­pi­tal, go­ing to the courts, go­ing to the po­lice sta­tion, and be­ing very mis­un­der­stood and not get­ting the ser­vices that they need as a deaf per­son,” she said.

“We talk­ing about hav­ing sign lan­guage in­ter­preters present to dis­sem­i­nate the in­for­ma­tion prop­er­ly, to break it down, or al­so you may have like a video, these are the steps to fol­low to make it as easy as pos­si­ble,” she said.

Paul al­so raised con­cerns about how fre­quent­ly deaf in­di­vid­u­als would be re­quired to re­new their per­mits, not­ing that many al­ready ex­press frus­tra­tion with the ex­ist­ing re­new­al process. “They ex­pect­ed to go like every year, every two years, in or­der to get their spe­cial per­mit, and they al­ready feel a big has­sle, so in oth­er words, we don’t want this mes­sage to be­come a neg­a­tive thing be­cause it’s such a strain on peo­ple,” she said. She hopes it’s not the same with the dis­abil­i­ty park­ing per­mits.

Peo­ple who want to ac­quire a per­mit have to sub­mit an ap­pli­ca­tion form and sup­port­ing doc­u­ments to the Ca­roni Li­cens­ing Head Of­fice. Guardian Me­dia was not able to ac­cess the web­site for in­for­ma­tion on the per­mits or a copy of the form. Founder of the Autism Sib­lings and Friends Net­work (ASFN), Maya Kir­ti Nanan, al­so called for an eas­i­er process to ac­cess the dis­abil­i­ty per­mit.

“So many times, peo­ple with­out dis­abil­i­ties, in­clud­ing po­lice ve­hi­cles, can be seen parked in these spots, and this re­sults in se­ri­ous in­con­ve­niences to those who need these parks. So it’s about time that we clamp down on this non­sense,” she said.

How­ev­er, she al­so ex­pressed con­cern that the park­ing spots were pri­mar­i­ly des­ig­nat­ed for in­di­vid­u­als with vis­i­ble phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ties. She urged the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MoWT) to con­sid­er pro­vid­ing spe­cial con­ces­sions for autis­tic in­di­vid­u­als, whose dis­abil­i­ties may not be im­me­di­ate­ly ap­par­ent. 

Co-founder of Autism Spir­it Michelle Fore­man added to Nanan’s con­cerns. She said that as with many changes re­gard­ing the dis­abled com­mu­ni­ty, this rais­es mul­ti­ple ques­tions and will re­quire ex­ten­sive clar­i­fi­ca­tion and ed­u­ca­tion in terms of the ac­tu­al de­f­i­n­i­tion of dis­abled as it per­tains to this spe­cif­ic law.