Fines for non-wear­ing of face masks will like­ly be on a slid­ing scale rang­ing from the min­i­mum traf­fic tick­et fine or up to $20,000 de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stances, Gov­ern­ment sources in­di­cat­ed yes­ter­day.

Leg­is­la­tion will be de­bat­ed and passed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives this af­ter­noon on the wear­ing of masks as a pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sure against the COVID-19 virus.

The Pub­lic Health Or­di­nance bill 2020 will deal with the is­sue and oth­er reg­u­la­tions in the cur­rent pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions on the virus. Fines for vi­o­la­tions of some mea­sures are $50,000 plus six months’ jail.

The bill al­so in­volves a menu of items in the or­di­nance that will be flex­i­ble and de­pend on the grav­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion at any point in time. Fines will be in synch with how se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tions are. The Health Min­is­ter will be em­pow­ered to amend the sched­ule to the reg­u­la­tions to add or re­move of­fences and al­ter fixed penal­ties. But in no case would a fixed penal­ty be more than $20,000.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi re­cent­ly said peo­ple who don’t wear masks will be tick­et­ed. The is­sue caused some con­cern yes­ter­day, with so­cial me­dia users spec­u­lat­ing on what lev­el fines may be.

Yes­ter­day, Al-Rawi added that the fines were still be­ing “fi­nalised” but didn’t want to say what they would be.

Oth­er Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment sources ex­plained that the fines for those tick­et­ed for not wear­ing masks would be on a slid­ing scale and fines could start from the min­i­mum $1,000 lev­el of a traf­fic tick­et or range as high as $20,000 ac­cord­ing to the cir­cum­stances. They said the fines would not go high­er than $20,000.

Yes­ter­day, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress PRO Ani­ta Haynes said while the Op­po­si­tion’s in agree­ment with mask-wear­ing the “dev­il is in the de­tails” of pro­posed leg­is­la­tion be­ing pre­sent­ed to­day.

Haynes said, “What we were sent was the Pub­lic Health Amend­ment bill. We have to see what the fur­ther reg­u­la­tions are – but the dev­il is in the de­tails. We’ll en­sure what was pre­sent­ed is in best pub­lic in­ter­est.”

The bill on­ly re­quires sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty votes for pas­sage. Once passed in the Low­er House, the amend­ment will be passed in the Sen­ate to­mor­row (Sat) and is ex­pect­ed to be­come ef­fec­tive to­mor­row or by the end of the week­end.

—Gail Alexan­der