Raphael John-Lall

Used car deal­ers are los­ing be­tween US$60 and US$80 a day per car due to the length of time it is tak­ing to reg­is­ter ve­hi­cles at the Li­cens­ing Of­fice in Port-of-Spain, Visham Bab­wah, pres­i­dent of the T&T Au­to­mo­tive Deal­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­DA), told the T&T Guardian.

"There are dif­fer­ent arrange­ments for new cars and used car deal­ers when it comes to li­cens­ing. They have bond­ed ar­eas where they can get their cars out, park it in oth­er ar­eas and do not have to pay rent. Small­er deal­ers do not have that and have to leave their cars un­til they are to be cleared from the port and can in­cur costs of US$60 to $80 a day a car. Two weeks would be US$800. This is a lot of mon­ey," he said.

He de­scribed the Li­cens­ing Of­fice, where em­ploy­ees have been work­ing much few­er hours per day for sev­er­al months, as "in­com­pe­tent".Fol­low­ing con­cerns raised by the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA), bar­gain­ing agents for the em­ploy­ees, over un­safe work­ing con­di­tions at the Wright­son Road com­pound, reg­is­tra­tion of ve­hi­cles stops at 1 pm.

Bab­wah com­plained: "Deal­ers are fac­ing a lot of loss­es be­cause they can on­ly in­crease prices up to a cer­tain lev­el. There is a lot of com­pe­ti­tion in the mar­ket. When deal­ers can­not get their cars reg­is­tered in a time­ly man­ner, it takes a longer time to move the cars off the port and the small­er deal­ers re­ly on a quick turn over and they lose mon­ey. The fi­nan­cial loss­es keep grow­ing be­cause of the in­com­pe­tence of the Li­cens­ing Of­fice."

Bab­wah al­so ex­pressed con­cern the Gov­ern­ment might be show­ing favouritism to the Au­to­mo­bile Deal­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (ADATT)."I have heard that they are hold­ing reg­u­lar meet­ings with the Trans­port Min­is­ter. We are not so for­tu­nate and ap­par­ent­ly the used car deal­ers have been put on the back burn­er. I have had one meet­ing with the Trans­port Min­is­ter since he has tak­en up of­fice and I have called for oth­er meet­ings. I am a bit skep­ti­cal now. Are we be­ing vic­timised? Is pri­or­i­ty be­ing giv­en to that as­so­ci­a­tion?" he asked.

He said the so­lu­tion rests square­ly on the shoul­ders of Trans­port Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz and Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Rueben Cato."When a min­is­ter takes up a port­fo­lio he should start deal­ing with the prob­lems. If he can­not do it then let the Prime Min­is­ter find some­one else. They said they are work­ing on it but that is not sat­is­fac­to­ry. The cars are still lin­ing up and we can­not get them reg­is­tered in a time­ly man­ner. We have dis­grun­tled cus­tomers and this sit­u­a­tion needs to be solved," Bab­wah said.

He said he hoped the sit­u­a­tion would be re­solved be­fore Christ­mas."They said they would call me and I am wait­ing for that. But I can­not wait un­til Christ­mas for this to be re­solved. The Li­cens­ing Of­fice must re­alise this is an es­sen­tial ser­vice," he said.Reyaz Ahamad, di­rec­tor of South­ern Sales and Ser­vice, who spoke to the Guardian on be­half of the ADATT, the body that rep­re­sents new car deal­ers, said there had been an im­prove­ment in the sit­u­a­tion at the Li­cenc­ing Of­fice.

"We have had reg­u­lar meet­ings with the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty and the line min­is­ter and we are see­ing some im­prove­ments and bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er so we want to be sure that con­tin­ues in the long term," he said.Ahamad was op­ti­mistic that there would be im­prove­ment in the sit­u­a­tion dur­ing De­cem­ber.

"There were some changes made at Li­cens­ing Of­fice to as­sist the process and we found the turn around time has been im­prov­ing. The con­cern was be­cause we could not get the cars reg­is­tered on (a) time­ly ba­sis we could not de­liv­er to cus­tomers, and at the end of the month the de­liv­er­ies were not as an­tic­i­pat­ed. "That is why we said we were hav­ing a short­fall. We are get­ting to a very busy and short month of Christ­mas and with the changes hope­ful­ly we will see im­prove­ments," he said.