Latest update November 5th, 2024 1:00 AM
Police re-launch crackdown on heavily tinted vehicle
The Guyana Police Force is warning owners of heavily tinted vehicles to remove
These vehicles were pulled in yesterday by the police to have their tints removed.
them or face immediate prosecution.
Yesterday, the police launched a campaign that resulted in several motorists, especially those on East Coast Demerara, being stopped and ordered to remove the dark tints from their vehicles.
Back in the early 2000s, Guyana introduced the law against tinted vehicles after the Queen’s College Old Students’ Association petitioned the then President Janet Jagan, complaining about the heavily-tinted minibuses which were hiding wrongdoing.
At first the prohibition was to target public transportation, but was subsequently changed to include all privately owned vehicles.
However, an exemption is made for persons who imported factory tinted vehicles. These persons are given an initial six months waiver by the Minister of Home Affairs (now Public Security) to replace the factory tinted windows.
Additionally, as it stands now, only certain vehicles are permitted to have tints without the expressed permission of the Minister of Public Security. These include diplomatic vehicles, and those belonging
to senior government and high-ranking military officials.
Within recent times, motorists have been wantonly violating the law, with some even going as far as tinting their front windscreens, making it almost impossible for the occupants to be identified.
Acting Traffic Chief, Superintendent Boodnarine Persaud, told this newspaper yesterday that the present exercise will be continuous and no one will be exempted.
“This is no bluff! We have started in-house and police ranks. Officers will have to remove their tints too. I told them that they will have to remove theirs because we cannot prosecute if we don’t clean our house first,” the acting Chief explained.
The issue of tinted vehicles has been a topic for much discussion, ever since it was introduced,
Retired Assistant Commissioner, Paul Slowe, under whose tenure as Traffic Chief the law was implemented had lamented last year in an interview with this newspaper that the tint law is being applied selectively.
Slowe had said that it is not difficult for the police to detect vehicles with tinted glasses, since most of them are driven in the daytime, and in some cases, by persons who are known to have had previous brushes with the law.
“Get them to take off the tint and get the authorities to recognize that you just can’t give permission willy-nilly when there is no law to support the giving of such permission. My story is, there is a law and we should obey the law. If you’re not comfortable with the law, then you should lobby and do what you have to do and get it changed,” Slowe had declared.
Kaieteur News understands that the decision behind the present campaign was an administrative one which stemmed from several complaints received by the police, especially about the operating of private cars for hire.
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