A SERVING member of the Guyana Police Force was recently placed before the court to answer twelve criminal charges. His bail was set at $1.2 million. The charges relate to the discovery of a massive driver’s licence scheme last April. In July, a total of 38 charges were levelled against two other police ranks relative to the same matter. According to particulars, the ranks conspired to, and carried out actions to fraudently allow persons to obtain licences by forging exam papers. Had the scheme not been uncovered, unqualified, unexamined persons could have been given licences, posing danger to themselves, other road users and public and private property.

In Guyana, to legally obtain a driver’s licence, one must pass a written test and a practical driving test. A certificate of competence may then be obtained, which can be used to acquire a licence.

The fact that many Guyanese buy licences is an open secret; ask any mini-bus driver, and he will tell you that there is a “standard price” for a fraudently-obtained examination pass, as well as another “standard price” for a Certificate of Competence, either of which may be used to obtain a licence.

Many drivers will also ask cynically, “why would anyone go through the legal process, when you can pass a raise and get a licence?”

The recently unearthed scam, therefore, is certainly not a unique case; on the contrary, it is the norm. Some may even venture to say that a larger number of licences are obtained fraudently, than are acquired by legal means. If that is even close to true, three questions arise: how many (or what fraction) of drivers are legally licenced to operate vehicles? What are the implications for the safety of road users? And, how can government correct the problem?

The first question may be difficult if not impossible to answer; many fraudently-obtained licences would have a paper trail, including forged exam papers and results. The three police ranks arrested in the current scam were, in fact, submitting forged exam papers.
The answer to the second question is obvious: Persons who obtained their licences by illegal means most certainly pose a danger to the public. Those individuals would have obtained licences without passing the written exam or the practical test, or both.

The written and practical exams usually test a person’s knowledge of road signs, traffic signals, stopping distances, and other knowledge necessary for safe driving. Therefore, a person who has never passed those exams may have little or even no knowledge of the meaning of a particular road sign or marking. Clearly, those are matters of great concern.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 118 persons died on Guyana’s roadways in 2017, or 15.88 deaths per 100,000 persons. The Guyana Police Force has recorded 51 deaths between January and June 2018. Clearly, for a country with such a small population, those numbers are unacceptable. That brings us to the third question: what can government do?

Evidently, the current system of licencing leaves much to be desired; there are too many loopholes which corrupt persons can exploit. In order to fix the problem, government would have to overhaul the entire system from top to bottom. Authorities would need to put in place an iron-clad, corruption-proof system which ensures that every person who wants a licence must necessarily undergo the required tests. But, even if a fool-proof system were implemented now, it would not address the problem of people who already have illegally-obtained licences. One solution to that problem would be to have every currently licenced driver undergo the requisite tests when applying to have their licence renewed.