Citizens have made it clear that they wanted action to make them safer and they have also said that the hand of the Police Service needs to be strengthened in tackling crime.
Some of the measures that law enforcement has been calling for over the years is the setting of standards for tints in vehicles.
The debate, therefore, has focused on the issue of tints for tint’s sake and not as a measure to support law enforcement, and that is unfortunate. The setting of standards for the level of tint on vehicles is about making people safer. We are, in fact, now going where other jurisdictions have already reached when we seek to remove the darker tints and the metallic reflective tints.
Let me make it clear that the initiative has been announced by the Prime Minister, but we now have to work on the actual regulations which will set the standards. The public service announcement that we issued yesterday (September 22, 2024) makes it clear that the regulations are not yet in force, and we therefore have some time to do some fine tuning.
Interested parties have already begun to reach out in relation to standards for public service vehicles and also commercial vehicles like trucks. When legitimate positions are advanced, they will be taken into account in the actual regulations.
What I can say is that having consulted with the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, having heard representations made from the time the announcement was made, it has been agreed to push back the effective date until January 1, 2025.
I expect that the regulations will be drafted in the next few weeks, and they will be widely promulgated so that everyone will know exactly what they will have to do to comply, but the dates that they will come into operation will be the 1st of January next year.
In the interim, we will use this time to increase public awareness and also to equip the police service with as many tint meters as we can source, so that they will be able to accurately test the tint levels on vehicles.