3.3 Compulsory Third-Party Insurance

Compulsory third-party insurance

The GPF subject list names the Motor Vehicles Insurance (Third Party Risk) Act, Cap. 51:03, and the booklet quotes sections 3, 4, and 7. The extract that follows is the use ban, the authorised-insurer and death-or-injury test, and the duty to produce the certificate. This independent OpenExamPrep study of those Guyana licensing topics stays with that quoted code. Compulsory cover here is third-party death and bodily injury, not a promise that the statute buys you a new bumper after a scrape on Regent Street.

The use ban: drive, cause, or permit

Section 3(1) is the rule you must be able to recite. Subject to the Act, it is not lawful for any person to use, or to cause or permit any other person to use, a motor vehicle on a public road unless there is in force, in relation to that user, a policy of insurance or a security in respect of third-party risks that complies with the Act.

Three verbs matter. Use catches the person behind the wheel. Cause or permit catches the owner, hirer, or supervisor who sends an uninsured driver out. “I was not driving” is not an answer if you handed over the keys. The place is a public road, not only a gazetted highway. A Georgetown street, an East Bank corridor, and a public road that leaves an estate all sit inside that phrase. The cover that satisfies the ban is a policy or a security. A handshake, a “we will sort it after,” or a comprehensive brochure that was never issued is not a complying policy.

Who is left outside the ban

Section 3(4) in the booklet extract carves out named public users. The section does not apply to:

• A motor vehicle owned by Government, the Georgetown City Council, or the New Amsterdam Town Council, when that vehicle is used and employed exclusively upon Government or municipal service.
• A vehicle at any time when it is being driven for police purposes by or under the direction of a member of the police force.
• A vehicle when it is being driven by a certifying officer in the exercise of duties under the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Act.

Exclusively is the word that stops a city truck from borrowing the exemption on a private weekend errand. A hire car painted in familiar Georgetown colours is still a private or commercial user unless it is actually one of those named owners on exclusive public service. Police-purpose driving is not “any person who knows a constable.” Certifying-officer driving is duty driving under Cap. 51:02, not the officer’s family car after work.

What a complying policy must be

Section 4 sets the product test. To comply, a policy of insurance must be a policy that:

• Is issued by a person who is an authorised insurer; and
• Insures the person, persons, or classes of persons specified in the policy against liability for the death of or bodily injury to any person caused by or arising out of the use of the motor vehicle on a public road.

Authorised insurer is a legal status, not a friendly stall at the market. Death or bodily injury to any person is the compulsory core. The quoted extract does not turn the theoretical exam into a comprehensive-motor course. Own-damage, windscreen, and theft add-ons may exist in the market; they are not the statutory minimum the booklet asks you to name. “Any person” is wide. It is not limited to a passenger you chose to carry.

Produce the certificate—or produce it within five days

The booklet then quotes the roadside production duty (printed there as the next numbered subsection after section 4). Any person driving a motor vehicle on a public road shall, on being so required by any member of the police force:

• Give his name and address;
• Give the name and address of the owner; and
• Produce his certificate.

Failure is an offence. The important proviso saves a fail-to-produce conviction, not the underlying “no policy in force” case. If the driver, within five days after the date production was required, produces the certificate in person at such police station as may have been specified by him at the time production was required, the driver shall not be convicted under that subsection for failing to produce the certificate.

Read the proviso slowly:

• Five days, not “when I next come to town.”
• In person, not a photo message and not a relative at the counter unless the Act you are studying says so—and the booklet quote says the driver produces it.
• At the station specified at the time the officer required production, not any convenient outpost later.

Naming the station is part of the save. If you never name a station, you have not used the proviso the booklet describes. Producing a certificate later also does not create cover that did not exist on the day of use. The five-day path is about the production offence.

How insurance locks to fitness and age

The same certificate of insurance is one of the three documents required when you apply for a certificate of fitness. A vehicle that cannot show third-party cover struggles to complete fitness and revenue licensing. Age limits from the previous section still apply: a twenty-year-old who is insured as a private-car driver is not thereby qualified for a hire car or G-series goods vehicle. Insurance answers “who pays if someone is killed or injured.” It does not rewrite section 33.

Third-party rules at a glance

Keep Government, the two named councils, police purposes, and the certifying officer as a closed exemption list. Do not add bodies the booklet did not name. Keep death and bodily injury as the cover the paper will test. Keep the five-day, in-person, named-station proviso as the only production save the extract gives you.