Gail Alexan­der

Sys­tems to pay fines elec­tron­i­cal­ly to the court for non-wear­ing of masks and oth­er is­sues moved a step clos­er to launch­ing af­ter the Sen­ate passed law for this yes­ter­day.

The bill to amend leg­is­la­tion for elec­tron­ic pay­ments in­to and out of court will now be de­bat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­day.

It was passed in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day by Gov­ern­ment and In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors - but mi­nus Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors, who were ab­sent.

The Op­po­si­tion “blanked” the Sen­ate as their col­leagues had boy­cotted last Fri­day’s House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives sit­ting. The lat­ter move was to high­light their con­cern on COVID pro­tec­tion af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter test­ed pos­i­tive for the virus last week.

As a re­sult of UNC Sen­a­tors’ ab­sence yes­ter­day, no ur­gent ques­tions on na­tion­al is­sues were posed to the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion ques­tions on the agen­da weren’t posed, al­though Gov­ern­ment stat­ed it was pre­pared to an­swer them.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, pi­lot­ing the bill, said there was an air of calm and peace in the Sen­ate which he hadn’t seen in his 11 years in Par­lia­ment.

He said it was re­fresh­ing to see as the holy month of Ra­madan starts.

Al-Rawi said the bill will re­move the need for peo­ple’s pres­ence and hav­ing to line up at courts to pay fines for non-mask-wear­ing, main­te­nance or oth­er mat­ters, in­clud­ing traf­fic tick­ets. The lat­ter con­sti­tutes a ma­jor­i­ty of court case­load.

Al-Rawi said the COVID pan­dem­ic had brought the need to ex­am­ine con­gre­gat­ing.

He said the bill un­locked op­por­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple to pay fines on­line with cred­it or deb­it cards with­out leav­ing their homes and at any time.

On queries, Al-Rawi ex­plained that the pay­er will have to bear a three per cent fee plus the full fine/pay­ment amount. He said it has worked in the Fam­i­ly Court and oth­er places.

Trans­ac­tions to move mon­ey be­tween ac­counts are per­mit­ted in the sys­tem. Spe­cial cards is­sued by the ju­di­cia­ry will as­sist “un­banked” peo­ple who lack cred­it cards. For some who paid main­te­nance and had prob­lems since court records were lost, an app in the new sys­tem will al­low the pay­er and re­ceiv­er to see when mon­ey is paid.

Al-Rawi said his min­istry’s Le­gal Af­fairs di­vi­sion did “be­ta test­ing” of this “al­pha prod­uct.” He said there will soon be no need to go to the Com­pa­nies Di­vi­sion to pay for fil­ing doc­u­ments.

His min­istry is the Caribbean’s first to have the new sys­tem.

The Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion min­istry will soon al­so fa­cil­i­tate sys­tems for “bed­side fil­ing.”

Al-Rawi added, “This Gov­ern­ment pledges to work for the ben­e­fit of peace, or­der and good gov­er­nance of so­ci­ety: we will turn up every sin­gle time. We will do our jobs.

“We’ll con­tin­ue to per­se­vere un­der the un­jus­ti­fied crit­i­cism brought by a now lost Op­po­si­tion - we’re de­ter­mined to car­ry T&T in­to bet­ter days.”

AG has COVID fa­tigue

Speak­ing on a sub­se­quent mo­tion re­gard­ing mar­itime quar­an­tine as­pects, Al-Rawi ad­mit­ted to feel­ing “COVID fa­tigue.”

He said he’d suc­cess­ful­ly de­fend­ed lit­i­ga­tion brought against the state re­gard­ing COVID-19, win­ning all - es­pe­cial­ly mas­sive amounts of Op­po­si­tion lit­i­ga­tion.

“We con­tin­ue to say sun­light doesn’t cure COVID, a dome won’t pro­tect T&T and the vac­ci­na­tion roll–out is some­thing still to be mea­sured.

“I can at­test to COVID fa­tigue – how peo­ple feel un­der this pan­dem­ic, how tired we are of liv­ing in the sit­u­a­tion we’re in. It’s not easy to be on dili­gent watch 24 hours dai­ly - some­thing we’re re­mind­ed to do every now and then. We are all hu­man. No­body’s per­fect, We need to make sure we do our very best.”