Gail Alexan­der

Pro­posed law to al­low pay­ments to be made to the court elec­tron­i­cal­ly - in­clud­ing on vi­o­la­tion of COVID health pro­to­cols and mask-wear­ing - will be de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate to­day and in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­mor­row.

And Op­po­si­tion UNC mem­bers will at­tend the de­bates, UNC deputy leader David Lee said yes­ter­day.

The Elec­tron­ic Pay­ments (In­to and Out of) Court bill will be de­bat­ed in the Sen­ate first this af­ter­noon. It pro­vides for de­duc­tion of bank charges, cred­it card charges, deb­it card charges, charge­back and ad­min­is­tra­tive and oth­er fees from the Cus­to­di­al Bank Ac­count, by agree­ment be­tween the Ju­di­cia­ry and a fi­nan­cial in­ter­me­di­ary. It re­quires a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty vote to be passed.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi said the bill al­lows for all pay­ments on fines re­gard­ing penal­ties to be made to the court elec­tron­i­cal­ly on­line.

This will in­clude fines for traf­fic tick­ets and oth­er mat­ters plus vi­o­la­tion of COVID Health pro­to­cols. The lat­ter as­pect al­so cov­ers pay­ing fines for non-wear­ing of masks.

In Jan­u­ary, it was re­port­ed that five months af­ter the mask law was im­ple­ment­ed, no sys­tem was in place to fa­cil­i­tate pay­ment of the $1,000 penal­ty for fail­ing to wear a face mask in pub­lic. Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith con­firmed then that peo­ple were un­able to pay the fines. He said while the po­lice is­sued tick­ets, the in­abil­i­ty to pay the fines in­volved the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. In Jan­u­ary, pay­ments were de­ferred to March.

Be­tween Sep­tem­ber 2020 and Jan­u­ary 2021, po­lice is­sued 4,486 tick­ets to peo­ple for fail­ing to wear face masks. Up­dates showed that be­tween Sep­tem­ber 2020 and March, 7,140 Health tick­ets were is­sued to mem­bers of the pub­lic - but there was still no pay­ment sys­tem in place up to March. How­ev­er, soft­ware for the sys­tem was be­ing im­ple­ment­ed.

Al-Rawi yes­ter­day said the bill is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the digi­ti­sa­tion of the econ­o­my and im­prove­ments to do busi­ness, in­clud­ing pay­ments for var­i­ous ser­vices at TTPost. He said the bill is al­so tied in with elim­i­nat­ing the back­log in mo­tor ve­hi­cle and road traf­fic cas­es, as Gov­ern­ment had ex­tend­ed the time­frame for the 50 per cent dis­count of­fered on tick­ets.

Af­ter to­day’s Sen­ate de­bate, the bill will be de­bat­ed in the Low­er House to­mor­row.

Last Fri­day, when the Op­po­si­tion boy­cotted that day’s sit­ting, Gov­ern­ment pro­ceed­ed to pass the An­ti-Gang Bill and ad­journed the House to a date to be fixed. But an agen­da for a House sit­ting to­mor­row was sub­se­quent­ly is­sued.

The Op­po­si­tion “blanked” last week’s House sit­ting, cit­ing con­cerns about pos­si­ble COVID con­ta­gion in Par­lia­ment since Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID last week. The UNC not­ed some PNM MPs had been around him. But Row­ley sub­se­quent­ly said he had no symp­toms on March 26 and 27, his flu-like symp­toms first ap­peared on the night of April 5 and he was test­ed and con­firmed pos­i­tive on the morn­ing of April 6. He said the stan­dard pro­to­col is that once symp­toms are ob­served, au­thor­i­ties will check con­tacts two to three days pri­or - that meant that his con­tacts in Par­lia­ment on March 26 and at a press con­fer­ence the next day don’t qual­i­fy un­der pro­to­cols for trac­ing.

Yes­ter­day UNC’s Lee said UNC mem­bers will at­tend to­mor­row’s House sit­ting since the 14 days that peo­ple should quar­an­tine (re­gard­ing the virus) have passed. He al­so ex­pect­ed UNC Sen­a­tors to be in the Sen­ate to­day.