Crawford supports traffic ticket amnesty with conditions

OPPOSITION SPOKESMAN on education, Damion Crawford, is supporting the demand by taxi operators for the Government to grant an amnesty for tickets accrued for road traffic violations, but with strict conditions.

Crawford suggested that the Holness administration grant a reprieve on traffic ticket payments for three years to taxi operators, with a rider that if they commit new traffic offences during the period all tickets would become due immediately.

“I think that if we did that, it would serve as a motivation to taxi persons to be better on the road and, similarly, will cause them to believe that there is some fairness in government policy, because there is an amnesty for guns,” Crawford argued in a Gleaner interview.

“Once there is an amnesty for guns, I can imagine that persons will equate the negativity of criminal activity through guns and say, How does that then lead to consideration for a man who would have used it for crime, for murder or robbery, and there is no consideration for us that they may perceive is a lower level of offence.”

He said that it is unfortunate that students are always unintended victims of protests by public transport operators.

“There is no intent within the transport sector to say that we are going to ‘soak’ these students today, but because children depend on the public transportation system, they are therefore going to be affected whenever there is unrest in that sector.”

With some schools impacted negatively by the taxi strike on Monday, Crawford suggested that institutions extend the schooldays or use additional days to compensate for the time lost.

However, he said that students who are yet to get their textbooks have suffered a greater loss.

“The vast majority of rental books are still not available to these students, who are now a third of the way into their entire term. A person doing CSEC in June will not get an extension, and he has not got his book,” Crawford pointed out.

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