The Gov­ern­ment has moved to dou­ble most traf­fic fines un­der the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act, with the in­creas­es tak­ing ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

In Au­gust 2024, while in Op­po­si­tion, UNC Po­lit­i­cal Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar railed against high traf­fic fines. She out­lined sev­er­al key pro­pos­als re­gard­ing the tick­et­ing and de­mer­it points sys­tem, promis­ing that if elect­ed she would re­duce traf­fic fines across the board. Per­sad-Bisses­sar ar­gued the fines were ex­ces­sive­ly high and had be­come a tool for gov­ern­ment rev­enue col­lec­tion rather than im­prov­ing road safe­ty.

Now, a Le­gal No­tice pub­lished on Christ­mas Day amends the Ninth Sched­ule of the Act, rais­ing penal­ties across dozens of of­fences, in­clud­ing speed­ing, dan­ger­ous dri­ving-re­lat­ed breach­es, doc­u­men­ta­tion of­fences and oth­er road traf­fic vi­o­la­tions.

Un­der the amend­ments, fines pre­vi­ous­ly set at $1,000 have been in­creased to $2,000; $750 fines dou­bled to $1,500; $300 fines raised to $600; and $450 fines in­creased to $900.

In oth­er cas­es, high­er penal­ties were ad­just­ed up­ward, in­clud­ing $2,000 fines in­creased to $4,000; and tiered penal­ties for re­peat of­fences raised across the board.

Based on a re­view of the amend­ed sched­ule, more than 60 in­di­vid­ual traf­fic of­fences now car­ry fines that are dou­ble their pre­vi­ous amounts, with sev­er­al oth­ers in­creased be­yond 100 per cent.

The changes were not out­lined dur­ing the 2025–2026 Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion and were not in­clud­ed in the Fi­nance Bill passed ear­li­er this month.

The Le­gal No­tice states the amend­ments come in­to force on Jan­u­ary 1.

Op­po­si­tion MP and for­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les crit­i­cised the move in a Face­book post, ac­cus­ing the Gov­ern­ment of act­ing with­out trans­paren­cy.

“This UNC Gov­ern­ment un­der Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is di­a­bol­i­cal and was con­ceived in in­iq­ui­ty and po­lit­i­cal sin like a yel­low Christ­mas Grinch,” Gon­za­les wrote.

“Whilst the coun­try was ‘dis­tract­ed in mer­ri­ment’ with fam­i­lies and friends on Christ­mas Day, they qui­et­ly pub­lished a Le­gal No­tice amend­ing the 9th Sched­ule of the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act by fur­ther in­creas­ing road traf­fic fines by 100%.”

Gon­za­les ar­gued the in­creas­es were nev­er dis­closed pub­licly.

“This was nev­er an­nounced in the bud­get or the Fi­nance Bill that was passed ear­ly in De­cem­ber. Where was the an­nounce­ment at a post Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence or a press re­lease? Where were the ju­nior min­is­te­r­i­al blog­gers with no re­al port­fo­lio?” he asked.

He al­so took aim at the Min­is­ter of Trans­port, con­trast­ing the si­lence on the fines with ear­li­er an­nounce­ments on road safe­ty pol­i­cy.

“These new fines are to come in­to ef­fect on Jan­u­ary 01, 2026 (next Thurs­day). The Min­is­ter of Trans­port, on this oc­ca­sion, did not call a news con­fer­ence to an­nounce these new fines,” he said, “sim­i­lar to when he fooled the pop­u­la­tion by call­ing a press con­fer­ence to an­nounce the so-called can­cel­la­tion of the De­mer­it Points Sys­tem.”

Gon­za­les de­scribed the tim­ing of the Le­gal No­tice as de­lib­er­ate:

“In a clan­des­tine and po­lit­i­cal­ly sur­rep­ti­tious and un­der-hand­ed man­ner, he signed a Le­gal No­tice and pub­lished it on CHRIST­MAS DAY.”