Tuesday, September 8 2009

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The better to hear: A vendor stoops to his radio to listen to the reading of the 2010 Budget at Woodford Square, Port-of-Spain yesterday. ...

FINANCE Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira in her Budget speech yesterday announced several tough measures to try to curb recklessness by errant motorists.

We were particularly heartened by her promise to bring a new law for the protection of young children travelling in motor vehicles.

She vowed, “The Government will bring legislation to this honourable House to make the use of child restraints mandatory for children five years of age and under.”

Exactly a week before the Budget — on Independence Day in fact — this newspaper took a conscious and conscientious decision to risk public criticism, following the tragic death of one- year-old baby Nevi Vionnna Ramjit who died after being flung out of a car during a crash (into a pole) which also killed her mother, Shamilla Ramjit.

Baby Nevi had not been secured in a child safety-seat but had been travelling on her mother’s lap in the front seat of the car driven by husband Ivan Ramjit.

While some readers criticised Newsday’s picture, others recognised that as a responsible, family newspaper whose staff all have families and children of their own, it was our intention to implore motorists to behave more responsibly on the nation’s roads and to urge the authorities to also act on this road-carnage that claims about 200 lives every year. This year, to date, 139 lives have been lost.

So, as a responsible newspaper, we warmly welcome and heartily applaud the Government’s decision to mandate child safety-seats.

Nunez-Tesheira also announced a $2,000 penalty for each of the motoring offences of the illegal use of the Priority Bus Route (PBR), having illegally tinted car-windows and for having no seatbelts.

We expect these measures to help boost road safety, once properly enforced by the police and law-courts.

However even as she promised these measures we couldn’t help but notice the glaring absence of any reference to the introduction of the breathalyser on the nation’s roads.

Nunez-Tesheira also fell short by also gleefully announcing that these measures would be expected to raise $40 million in revenue for the Government. This addendum, unfortunately, risks colouring these safety measures as revenue-earners for the Government.

This is especially so given that these safety measures were then followed by a list of other measures to raise revenues, such as more costly drivers licences, increased car-transfer taxes, and of course the “sin taxes”.

In addition, the debate will surely rage as to whether or not a cash-strapped Government is simply picking on easy targets in the form of consumers of alcohol and cigarettes, in the name of promoting healthy lifestyles.

Car-owners and property-owners will also take note of the proposal to respectively increase car- transfer taxes, and to update property taxes.

On the positive side, we welcome the help for manufacturers to retool by increasing the tax-break on their machinery and plant from a current 75 percent to 90 percent, as this represents a targetting of their requested stimulus package to productive areas. While it sounds “nice” that small contractors will be given a fair share of work to build the Early Childhood Care Centres (ECCEs), we have two concerns. We hope the award of contracts will be unbiased and not echo that of CEPEP contracts, and we hope this most worthy project of providing for the nation’s infants, can actually overcome the delays of the past.