Jesse Ramdeo

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan says the de­mer­it points sys­tem has fi­nal­ly been rolled out at a cost of $12 mil­lion, which is sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than what Gov­ern­ment an­tic­i­pat­ed.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day's launch of the ini­tia­tive, which is now part of the na­tion­al road safe­ty pro­gramme, Sinanan said he was hope­ful the nec­es­sary be­hav­iour­al changes will be made to re­duce road fa­tal­i­ties.

“It is no longer about who could af­ford to pay and who can't af­ford to pay, the en­tire sys­tem will work when you get the be­hav­ioral change. This is not a rev­enue gen­er­a­tor for the Gov­ern­ment, it's about re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing dri­vers and sav­ing lives,” Sinanan told stake­hold­ers at the event.

He said what was once ear­marked as a one hun­dred-mil­lion-dol­lar project was brought down to just over one-tenth of that fig­ure. Sinanan did not go in­to de­tail about what caused the project to be over bud­get but main­tained no cor­ners were cut in rolling it out.

Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weeks on Tues­day pro­claimed the amend­ments to the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle and Traf­fic Act 2017 which paved the way for im­ple­men­ta­tion of the de­mer­it points sys­tem and oth­er road safe­ty mea­sures.

The min­istry has al­so ad­vised that the Red Light Cam­era En­force­ment Sys­tem will take ef­fect at a lat­er date to be an­nounced.

Ar­rive Alive pres­i­dent Sharon In­gle­field, who has been a main ad­vo­cate for the sys­tem, ap­plaud­ed Gov­ern­ment for its roll­out and al­ready has her sights set on fur­ther road safe­ty im­prove­ments.

“We want to see the bar­ri­ers, we want to see the traf­fic lights well main­tained, be­cause they all tie in the en­gi­neer­ing,” In­gle­field said.

While the de­mer­it points sys­tem could bring the 19 per cent re­duc­tion in road fa­tal­i­ties even fur­ther, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith said there are al­so ben­e­fits for law en­force­ment.

“If you re­mem­ber, be­fore po­lice was hid­ing be­hind lamp­post and jump­ing out but this de­vice in my hand is not a cell­phone, it's tech­nol­o­gy and it means po­lice can get back out and deal with sit­u­a­tions with mo­torists.”

Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke al­so re­vealed sweep­ing changes are on the hori­zon for the ac­qui­si­tion of a dri­ver's per­mit. He said ap­pli­cants will soon con­duct an ex­am elec­tron­i­cal­ly since there con­tin­ue to be is­sues with the cur­rent sys­tem.