Link the payment of fines for ticketable traffic offences to the issuance of road service licences

Dear Editor,

Not so long I recently observed that the Guyana Police Force (GPF) is finding great difficulty in the collection of fines for ticketable traffic offences. In fact, the Minister of Home Affairs is probably on record as lamenting that it is in the tens of millions of Guyana dollars and if necessary he will add to the list of offences.

What I would advise the good minister to do is to have the paid and unpaid tickets accurately reconciled with the duplicates/stubs and give vehicle numbers and any other pertinent information about the unpaid tickets to the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and link them to the road service licences of those vehicles. When anyone goes to buy a road service licence, they would have to pay off the fines; if they do not, then they must not be sold that road service licence. It then follows that certificates of insurance (the insurance companies must be aware of this) and fitness cannot be issued. The result would be that the vehicle cannot be used, so there would be great inconvenience to the user.

Systems must be put in place for the MOHA, GPF and the GRA, with appropriate controls, to work together to stamp out the non- payment of fines, as well as weed out corrupt officials who would have access to the system and could delete fines.

Who benefits? The honest hard-working, patriotic Guyanese who adhere to the rule of law.

Yours faithfully,

Roger A Bhulai