Driving in Jamaica
Answer
The general rule applies to you
No exception is recorded for citizens of Suriname on this topic. That is the answer, not a gap - everything below is the rule you get, unchanged.
81 exceptions recorded across 33 countries · none match Suriname to Jamaica · Driving and licence exchange
The Road Traffic Act in force says you may not drive on a road unless you hold a licence for the purpose, and licence there means a Jamaican one. There is no provision in it deeming a foreign licence to be a Jamaican licence, so the familiar advice that a visitor may drive for three months on a home licence has nothing in this Act behind it. What the Act does have is a route to a Jamaican licence without the usual requirements: a person making only a temporary stay who produces a licence issued to them not more than twelve months earlier by the competent authority of the country they come from is exempt from everything in the subsection except the fee - and the Licensing Authority may still require them to comply. A new Road Traffic Act was passed in 2018 and it would change this, but it commences on a day the Minister appoints by notice in the Gazette, different days may be appointed for different provisions, and we did not find the notice published. On the published law, the 1938 Act is what you drive under.
At a glance
- Driving on a foreign licence
- No provision for it in the Act in force
- Age of the foreign licence that unlocks the exemption
- Issued not more than twelve months before
- What the exemption does not cover
- The licensing fee
- Road Traffic Act 2018
- Not shown to be in forceas of 2026-10-06
It commences on a day appointed by the Minister by notice in the Gazette, and we did not find the notice
- Edition of the Act in force that is published
- Pages last authorised in 2006
Requirements
- A Jamaican driver's licence to drive on a road, whatever licence you hold elsewhere
- For a temporary stay: a licence issued to you by the competent authority of the country you come from, not more than twelve months before
- Payment of the licensing fee, which the exemption does not cover
- Compliance with anything else the Licensing Authority decides to require, which the Act expressly preserves
Country-level policy
Most countries freeze a revised edition at a date and print the date on the cover. Jamaica does not have an edition in that sense. The Revised Laws of Jamaica are loose-leaf: the Minister authorises the inclusion of individual pages by order published in the Gazette, each page carries a note of the order that authorised it, and the pages so authorised are from that date deemed to be the sole and proper Statute Book of Jamaica for the laws they contain. So the cut-off is not a property of an Act, it is a property of a page: the foot of every page of every statute on the law portal says which Legal Notice put it there. Open the Law Revision Act itself and you will find pages authorised by L.N. 480 of 1973 sitting next to pages authorised by L.N. 92c of 2012. What you can read off a Jamaican statute is therefore precise in a way nothing else in the region is, and the honest cut-off for a whole Chapter is the newest Legal Notice printed anywhere in it.
What applies to you
Nothing changes for a citizen of Suriname
We have no rule recorded that treats your citizenship differently here, so the general rule above is the one that applies to you. That is an answer, not a gap.
What the law says
«A person shall not drive a motor vehicle on a road»The marginal note sits inside the printed line, so the sentence is quoted in two parts.
«unless he is the holder of a licence for the purpose (in this Act»Continues: referred to as a driver's licence. The Act defines it as a licence issued under this Act.
«shall not apply to a person making only a temporary stay
in Jamaica if he produces to the Traffic Area Authority a
driver’s licence issued to him not longer than twelve months
before by the competent Authority in the country from
which he comes:»The opening words, not quoted here because the marginal note interrupts them, except the provision for the payment of the licensing fee.
«Provided further that the Licensing Authority may in
any case require the holder of such a licence to comply
with all or any of the provisions of this subsection.»So the exemption is a discretion to waive, not an entitlement.
«This Act may be cited as the Road Traffic Act, 2018 and,»The document the Houses of Parliament publish is headed A BILL ENTITLED and its enactment date is a blank pair of brackets, so it is the text as laid rather than as enacted.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The legislature, publishing Bills and Acts as laid, including the Road Traffic Act 2018 and the Customs Act 2020.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for what is in force. What it publishes under the name of an Act is often the Bill: the Road Traffic Act 2018 file is headed A BILL ENTITLED and leaves the enactment date as an empty pair of brackets. Both of the Acts it publishes that matter here commence on a day the Minister appoints by notice in the Gazette, with different days permitted for different provisions, and it publishes no such notice.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«appointed by the Minister by notice published in the Gazette.»About this source
The legislature, publishing Bills and Acts as laid, including the Road Traffic Act 2018 and the Customs Act 2020.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for what is in force. What it publishes under the name of an Act is often the Bill: the Road Traffic Act 2018 file is headed A BILL ENTITLED and leaves the enactment date as an empty pair of brackets. Both of the Acts it publishes that matter here commence on a day the Minister appoints by notice in the Gazette, with different days permitted for different provisions, and it publishes no such notice.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«(2) Different days may be appointed for the coming into
operation of different provisions of this Act.»About this source
The legislature, publishing Bills and Acts as laid, including the Road Traffic Act 2018 and the Customs Act 2020.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for what is in force. What it publishes under the name of an Act is often the Bill: the Road Traffic Act 2018 file is headed A BILL ENTITLED and leaves the enactment date as an empty pair of brackets. Both of the Acts it publishes that matter here commence on a day the Minister appoints by notice in the Gazette, with different days permitted for different provisions, and it publishes no such notice.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The 2018 Act would deem a foreign licence from a prescribed country to be a Jamaican licence for a limited period. That is the rule most guides describe. Until the commencement notice can be read, it is not the rule we publish.
We looked for the commencement notice in the Ministry of Justice law portal's statute search and in its gazette library. The gazette library lists years from 2000 to 2024 and returns no records at all to a reader who is not signed in, so the search was not capable of settling the question either way.
The revised Road Traffic Act on the law portal has pages last authorised in 2006, and the portal's own catalogue entry says the Act was last amended in 2015. Both figures are older than the 2018 Act, so neither edition shows what the 2018 Act did.
- consolidatesThe Road Traffic Act
Laws of Jamaica (Ministry of Justice) · consolidated to 2006
About this source
Jamaica's statute library, publishing the Revised Laws of Jamaica, the revised subsidiary legislation, Acts of Parliament by year and the Jamaica Gazette. Every document is a scan of the printed page with a text layer the publisher produced by recognition. It carries the Constitution, the Immigration Restriction (Commonwealth Citizens) Act, the Aliens Act, the Jamaican Nationality Act, the Foreign Nationals and Commonwealth Citizens (Employment) Act, both Caribbean Community Acts, the Income Tax Act, the Customs Act and the Road Traffic Act.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for what a whole Act looks like today without reading the foot of the page: the Revised Laws are loose-leaf and each page is current only to the Legal Notice that authorised its inclusion, so one Act can hold pages from 1973 and 2012 at once. It publishes almost no commencement instruments, and the Law Revision Act expressly lets the Commissioners omit commencement provisions from the text, so a Chapter will often not say when it started. Its catalogue dates - operational date, last amendment - are not cut-offs and contradict the pages: the Free Movement of Skilled Persons Act is catalogued as last amended in 2004 and its pages were authorised in 2016. It must never be relied on for an absence in the Income Tax Act or the Customs Act: 102 of 295 pages of the first and 46 of 155 of the second carry no text layer at all, and the Second Schedule to the Customs Act is not in the published file. The Free Movement of Skilled Persons Act has no text layer at any page. Its browse index and gazette index are served by an endpoint that redirects an anonymous reader to an administrator login, so neither list returns anything and addresses have to be guessed from the title. Its TLS chain omits the intermediate certificate, so an ordinary client refuses the connection until the missing certificate is supplied.
We re-read it every 60 days. More about this source
- issuesThe Road Traffic Act, 2018
Houses of Parliament of Jamaica
About this source
The legislature, publishing Bills and Acts as laid, including the Road Traffic Act 2018 and the Customs Act 2020.
Standing: Issues the instrument
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for what is in force. What it publishes under the name of an Act is often the Bill: the Road Traffic Act 2018 file is headed A BILL ENTITLED and leaves the enactment date as an empty pair of brackets. Both of the Acts it publishes that matter here commence on a day the Minister appoints by notice in the Gazette, with different days permitted for different provisions, and it publishes no such notice.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source