3 months ago
10
Senior Reporter
Lamenting the loss of family breadwinners through road fatalities, Arrive Alive wants the Finance Ministry to explain the status of the Motor Vehicle Accident Fund. According to its president, Sharon Inglefield, the fund holds over $1 billion and serves as a safety net for compensating victims of accidents caused by uninsured drivers.
“This is a tax on insurance premiums meant to compensate victims who are uninsured, where the driver who injured them has not been able to compensate them,” Inglefield explained. “So, this tax is meant to compensate them for loss of job, injury, hospital expenses, and physiotherapy, and between 2008 and 2014, over $1 billion was collected from this tax on our insurance premiums; however, the uninsured victims have not received any compensation.”
The Arrive Alive president said she was disappointed that in 2024, the fund has not been set up to compensate families.
“It’s vitally important because the majority of people dying and seriously injured on the roads are young males. They could be breadwinners, so this fund needs to be established to compensate them. So that they can feel that due care of attention is given to their family,” she posited.
In 2015, the fund received a name change and Cabinet approval, with a start-up capital of $20 million. Then Finance Minister Larry Howai explained in 2015 that the Motor Vehicle Accident Fund would be administered by a statutory body established through legislation and governed by a board of directors.
It was estimated that the average claim would be in the range of $40,000.
When Guardian Media contacted Howai yesterday for an update on the fund, he indicated that he could not recall much about it given that nearly a decade had passed since he was minister.
Questions on the fund were also sent to current ministers Colm Imbert and Brian Manning, however, only Manning responded, saying, “No comment at this time.”
Written questions were sent to Minister Imbert through his communications department, as the minister has blocked the phone numbers of several reporters. There was no response up to late yesterday.
Inglefield said it was a shame that money was being collected for the fund without mechanisms set up for public access.
“It is very disappointing because since 2008 this law was implemented and this tax is being collected, so it is very disappointing that families have no means to access these funds,” she argued.
Meanwhile, Inglefield is challenging the Works and Transport Minister’s decision to phase out cable barriers along the Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway and instead install New Jersey concrete barriers, which are commonly seen along the Churchill-Roosevelt Highway. Inglefield claims that the geography of central and south Trinidad called for cable barriers.
“We have undulated land where that highway (Sir Solomon Hochoy Highway) was built. A highway where you install concrete barriers has to be level. So, on the Churchill Roosevelt Highway, we should have concrete barriers all the way up, but certainly going south, we should have a guardrail system going all the way to San Fernando,” Inglefield postulated.
Revealing that for the year so far there had been 62 road deaths compared to 57 for this same period last year, Inglefield said Arrive Alive is very disappointed that drivers continue to break the speed limits.
“The mere fact that we are driving on a highway that has no barriers, we should be reducing our speed. Because the fact is our lives are at risk on a highway where the pavements are not perfect and we are lacking in guardrails. We just had the death of two young men—we appeal to all drivers to reduce their speed; all of us are at risk at high speeds much less when the highways are not up to par,” Inglefield said.
Last week, Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan announced that the Government was trying several initiatives to change this country’s driving culture. A proposed move is to name and shame drivers whose licenses are to be suspended.
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