Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall, S.C., has announced that the Government is moving to create a digital registry of road traffic offenders, a measure he said will significantly improve the enforcement of traffic laws and allow authorities to impose tougher penalties on repeat offenders.
According to Nandlall, the initiative is being led by the Attorney General’s Chambers in keeping with directives issued by President Dr. Irfaan Ali, and will involve several agencies, including the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Public Service and Government Efficiency, the Guyana Police Force and the National Data Management Authority.
He explained that the registry will contain critical information on road users, including details related to their driver’s licences as well as their past charges and convictions for road traffic and related offences.
Once operational, the system will be accessible to key state institutions such as the Judiciary, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Guyana Police Force, the Guyana Prison Service, the Probation Department, and the Guyana Revenue Authority.
Nandlall said the registry is intended to address a longstanding weakness in the current system, in which records of previous charges and convictions are stored manually in files and case jackets across the country. As a result, magistrates and other law enforcement officials often do not have immediate access to a defendant’s traffic history when matters are before the courts.
He noted that this has undermined the proper enforcement of provisions already contained in the law, including the demerit point system and sanctions that provide for the suspension or revocation of driver’s licences for repeat offenders convicted of offences such as drunken driving and motor manslaughter.
With the new digital system in place, judicial officers and other authorities will be better equipped to make informed decisions and apply the penalties prescribed by law.
The Attorney General said the government is also preparing a new round of legislative amendments to the Motor Vehicle and Road Traffic Act and related laws to address issues such as noise nuisance and littering in public spaces.
He pointed specifically to loud music from vehicles and excessive noise from motorcycles operating without muffler systems, describing such behaviour as a growing public nuisance.
He also signalled tougher legislative action against indiscriminate dumping, saying the government can no longer tolerate littering on streets and in drainage canals across the country.
On the question of when the digital registry will become operational, Nandlall said the government wants the system completed as quickly as possible, though its rollout will depend on technical teams and the agencies currently holding the data.
He stressed, however, that the administration’s position is that the work must be done with “extraordinary dispatch.”
