Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

The Ju­di­cia­ry is seek­ing to close a le­gal loop­hole al­leged­ly be­ing used by some mo­torists to evade traf­fic tick­ets.

Chief Jus­tice Ron­nie Boodoos­ingh high­light­ed the loop­hole while de­liv­er­ing his ad­dress at the open­ing of the 2026/2027 Law Term on Wednes­day.

He said some mo­torists were abus­ing the cur­rent fixed-penal­ty tick­et­ing sys­tem, which al­lows tick­et re­cip­i­ents to choose the court dis­trict in which they wish to con­test a tick­et rather than be­ing con­fined to the dis­trict where it was is­sued.

Boodoos­ingh said mo­torists be­gan choos­ing dis­tricts with longer case lists, re­sult­ing in hear­ing dates be­ing set years lat­er.

“Of course, peo­ple of­ten look for ways to beat a sys­tem. So they be­gan to choose lo­ca­tions where the lists were longer, re­sult­ing in them get­ting dates of hear­ings years down the line,” Boodoos­ingh said.

“An at­tempt to make it more con­ve­nient for the tick­et re­cip­i­ent be­came a way of beat­ing the sys­tem be­cause, in three or four years, chances are the po­lice of­fi­cer may no longer be in that dis­trict or may for­get about the case,” he added.

He said the prac­tice makes a mock­ery of the sys­tem and has prompt­ed cit­i­zens to com­plain on so­cial me­dia about de­lays in hear­ing and de­ter­min­ing traf­fic cas­es.

“The man­age­ment of the list­ing of traf­fic cas­es is a good ex­am­ple of the cyn­ic’s adage that no good deed goes un­pun­ished,” Boodoos­ingh said.

He an­nounced plans to ad­dress the is­sue by work­ing with the Min­istry of Trans­port and Avi­a­tion to pro­vide short­er re­turn dates, al­low­ing traf­fic cas­es to be heard and dis­posed of more quick­ly.

The fixed-penal­ty sys­tem was in­tro­duced sev­er­al years ago to mod­ernise out­dat­ed pro­ce­dures and prac­tices for road traf­fic law en­force­ment through the use of tech­nol­o­gy. It was al­so in­tend­ed to re­duce the high num­ber of traf­fic cas­es filed an­nu­al­ly in the Mag­is­trates’ Courts.

Boodoos­ingh al­so raised con­cerns about the courts’ dis­po­si­tion rate, which he said re­mains in­or­di­nate­ly low de­spite a re­duced case­load.

He sug­gest­ed the de­cline in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty was linked to the con­tin­ued re­liance on vir­tu­al hear­ings af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic had end­ed.

He pre­sent­ed sta­tis­tics show­ing that mag­is­trates dis­posed of be­tween 80,000 and 100,000 cas­es an­nu­al­ly be­fore vir­tu­al hear­ings were in­tro­duced, com­pared with ap­prox­i­mate­ly 10,000 cas­es af­ter their wide­spread adop­tion, de­spite mag­is­trates be­ing re­quired to han­dle few­er cas­es.

“The COVID pan­dem­ic is long fin­ished and so our sys­tems must be re­ori­ent­ed to pro­mote ef­fi­cient op­er­a­tions,” he said.

How­ev­er, Boodoos­ingh ac­knowl­edged that vir­tu­al hear­ings may still be ap­pro­pri­ate in some cir­cum­stances.