ST. GEORGE’S, Grenada – Grenada's government on Tuesday complained of too many private vehicles on the roads here and has announced plans for an initiative that will result in a reduction.
Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell told a news conference that the high number of vehicle is not sustainable for the road infrastructure and the environment.
“It is not sustainable to have the number of private vehicles we have on the road, and for this purpose I am distinguishing between private and public, not who owns the vehicle but the use towards the vehicle is put,” he said, explaining that the rolling back should not affect vehicles that are used for commuting passengers.
“We are not talking about those…we are talking about vehicles that are used solely for the private benefit of the owner which is invariable a car or a pickup or an SUV and the challenge we have here is that the number of vehicles we have in Grenada has grown exponentially.
“We have over 60,000 vehicles on the road, if we inflate our population a bit and say we have 120,000 it means that we have a vehicle for every two persons on the island, that is just not sustainable,” he said.
“It is not sustainable because our road infrastructure cannot handle it and vehicles like all other machines have a shelf life and when the shelf life comes to an end, what happens,” Mitchell said, noting that some of the vehicles are abandoned on the side of the roads with the government having to do the cleaning up.
“What we are seeking to do is to encourage a system where…we do not waste our resources and wasting of our resources includes our private vehicles. As a citizen, if you find yourself buying a private vehicle simply because the public transport system cannot meet your needs, it means you are probably making a decision that you will not want to make.
“It means you are going to spend a lot of money simply trying to maintain that vehicle, insured that vehicle, pray to God it does not meet in an accident just so you can get to point A or to point B,” said the Transportation who is of the view that instead of investing in a vehicle citizens should invest in education or business.
“Often times those resources could be put towards better things that you can invest in, like education, house, business etc. The idea is that the more we can have a public transportation system that moves people in mass, where one vehicle can move more people, it’s a more efficient system, the cost for the system becomes lower and the carbon footprint becomes lower,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mitchell said that the government will be removing the Commissioner of Police as the Licensing and Inspection Authority for vehicles and will be re-assigning that authority to the Grenada Transport Commission (GTC).
The Road Traffic legislation states that “The Commissioner of Police shall be the Licensing Authority and shall as such be charged with responsibility for the registration, licensing and inspection of all motor vehicles, the issue of driving licences, and such other matters as are assigned to him or her by this Act or any regulations made here under”.
But Mitchell told reporters that there is at present a shortage of police officers, and the government will be assigning several duties that are done by the law enforcement officers to civilians.
“We intend to migrate the licensing and inspection of motor vehicles which are currently handled by the Royal Grenada Police Force, under the Transport Commission, we are already short staff of police officers, and we need them to be engaged them in matters that are proper policing and anything that can be handled by civilian authorities we will so do,” said Mitchell, who is also the Minister for Transport.
“So, for the inspection and licensing of vehicles we intend to transfer that to the transport commission and that is one of the strategic things that we will do in the next 12 months,” he said, announcing also the bus terminals currently under the responsibility of the Grenada Ports Authority will also be reassigned to GTC.
