Why Not Simply Pass A Law Outlawing Dark Tint As Other Countries Have?

There is a raft of rea­sons behind the law­less­ness and chaos which seem to char­ac­ter­ize every­thing in Jamaica , not the least of which is the pro­cliv­i­ty of politi­cians to demand actions from sec­tors of the coun­try with­out hav­ing first cod­i­fied those demands in law.

The lat­est exam­ple of this is the demand the Minister of National Security made that all pub­lic pas­sen­ger vehi­cles with tints remove said tints.
The demand came amidst mount­ing alle­ga­tions that women and young girls who end up being raped and mur­dered are being picked up in dark­ly tint­ed taxi cabs.

I have no data which would sug­gest that the Minister has any infor­ma­tion which would sug­gest that if there were no tints on these pub­lic pas­sen­ger vehi­cles women and girls would be bet­ter protected.
Even if true, the Minister has not indi­cat­ed why it is nec­es­sary to have a blan­ket pol­i­cy man­dat­ing that all pub­lic pas­sen­ger vehi­cles remove their tints, to include JUTC buses.

The Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) a Government enti­ty announced it will com­ply with the direc­tive from the Government, even though the cost asso­ci­at­ed with the removal will be astronomical.
Reginald Allen, mar­ket­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er at the JUTC, said while the removal of tints was a dif­fi­cult exer­cise, the state-owned com­pa­ny was com­mit­ted to being com­pli­ant. “It is very, very dif­fi­cult, but we are look­ing at a few mea­sures over time, includ­ing spe­cial secu­ri­ty arrange­ments for those bus­es [that will take time to get reg­u­larised],” Allen told The Gleaner.

Among the chal­lenges the (JUTC) faces oth­er than costs is the place­ment of adver­tise­ment on it’s bus­es. Not being allowed to place ads on bus win­dows arguably could result in a loss of rev­enue for the strug­gling (JUTC).
Allen not­ed that the JUTC has been grant­ed a peri­od of 12 months to adjust to the new mea­sures which the Government is con­vinced will help to quell the fears of many result­ing from reports of the kid­nap­ping and killing of women and chil­dren in recent times.

There are sig­nif­i­cant costs asso­ci­at­ed with this tint removal process as well as logis­ti­cal issues. But there would be a sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem if the Government’s own enti­ty was not com­ply­ing with it’s own directive.
The (JUTC ) has been giv­en up to a year to remove tints from it’s fleet of bus­es, fair enough right.
Right !”
That“s only fair con­sid­er­ing that the (JUTC) has a fleet of more than 400 buses.
On the oth­er hand the Police are active­ly seiz­ing pri­vate bus­es and Taxi’s which have not com­plied with the direc­tive. We can agree that it does not require a full year to remove tints from a sin­gle pas­sen­ger vehi­cle ‚but the Government should give oper­a­tors at least a month before tak­ing their plates.

THEN COMES THE “C” WORD…

Much cha­grined, the Jamaica Association of Transport Owners and Operators (JATOO) has asked the police for a sus­pen­sion in the removal of tints from pub­lic pas­sen­ger motor vehi­cles (PPV).
According to (JATOO).
“We are unable to rep­re­sent any mem­ber on this issue before a deci­sion is made regard­ing tints,” it added.”We are also advis­ing the trav­el­ling pub­lic that if you can­not see inside of a vehi­cle, you should not enter into that vehicle.”
The Association has been invit­ed to a meet­ing next Monday at Jamaica House to dis­cuss the issue.

With all of that said, many in (JATOO) are actu­al­ly say­ing that this direc­tive is .…. wait for it.……is not.… ( constitutional).
Ha „ this was bound to happen .
When you think about it , enforc­ing the nation’s laws is a huge challenge .
How do you enforce a direc­tive when it is not cod­i­fied in law?

On the face of it this is a huge endeav­or which is not a law. There is no data which would indi­cate that remov­ing tints will have a sig­nif­i­cant, or even a neg­li­gi­ble effect on crime.
Tint pol­i­cy is not an out of this realm require­ment. If you live in many states of the United States pub­lic pas­sen­gers vehi­cles are not allowed to have dark tint.
In fact even pri­vate motor vehi­cles are barred from hav­ing dark tint.
Other coun­tries have the same pol­i­cy, the dif­fer­ence being that in each and every case laws are passed before the direc­tives are made. http://​www​.the​hin​du​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​c​i​t​i​e​s​/​b​a​n​g​a​l​o​r​e​/​s​u​n​-​f​i​l​m​-​w​i​t​h​-​e​x​t​r​a​-​t​i​n​t​-​s​h​o​u​l​d​-​b​e​-​r​e​m​o​v​e​d​-​f​r​o​m​-​c​a​r​s​-​b​e​f​o​r​e​-​m​a​y​-​1​9​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​3​3​9​3​1​7​2​.​ece

That’s a step above what the Jamaican author­i­ties are asking.
The prob­lem with Jamaican author­i­ties is that they ask peo­ple to do things instead of pass­ing laws which cit­i­zens are man­dat­ed to follow.