The comment “police making a killing this morning” was heard during a video of road tax controls on Saturday circulating on social media. Authorities had warned these would start at the end of last week and vehicles without the new number plates for 2022 were an easy target.
Not that persons involved deserve too much sympathy. The actual deadline was at the end of February, so – partly because the licence plates came late – motorists had more than a month extra to comply with their annual obligation.
Somewhat regrettable was the sight of rental cars with outdated “R” plates being stopped as well. The occupants, often visitors, were needlessly inconvenienced through no fault of their own.
Rental agencies are obviously to blame in such cases and should be held accountable. Their clients must be able to depend on reliable quality service also in the interest of the destination’s reputation.
Doing business, especially when it requires a special licence, comes with responsibility. Entrepreneurs who don’t show enough undermine not only their own ventures but the entire field in which they operate and ultimately the island’s whole tourism economy.
To be sure, proceeds of fines do not go to the police but rather the Crime Prevention Fund, for which the first spending plan since it came to be in 2010 was supposed to have been created by the end of last November (see Friday/Saturday edition). That apparently did not happen yet, while the Law Enforcement Council could find no data on expenditures before 2016.
There was, thankfully, a record of monies awarded from then to 2018, while supervision of deposits into the fund and their use by government has been included in the Country Reform Packages Priorities and Objective Measures 2021 as condition for liquidity support from the Netherlands.
A bit more transparency, particularly as it regards the justice sector, is certainly in order.
