JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke says break-ins at two Li­cens­ing offices yes­ter­day morn­ing have prompt­ed an in­crease in se­cu­ri­ty.

Clarke said be­tween 2.30 and 3 am yes­ter­day two of the of­fices at Wright­son Road and Ca­roni were bro­ken in­to. Clarke said while noth­ing valu­able was tak­en, the fact that some­one breached the premis­es was enough to war­rant an in­crease in se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Clarke said the cur­rent sys­tem of pa­trols and se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras de­tect­ed a man rum­mag­ing through the cashier’s draw­er at the Ca­roni of­fice.

“This sys­tem that we have placed at Li­cens­ing, we have iden­ti­fied a num­ber of, and let me use the term, ‘strange things’ that have hap­pened over the years and in some in­stances re­cent. We can­not, at this point in time, let our guards down on any­thing what­so­ev­er as it re­lates to li­cens­ing in­for­ma­tion,” he said.

Clarke said with an up­grade in the sys­tems at the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion, which has un­earthed fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ties such as du­pli­cat­ing dri­vers' li­cences, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (un­der which Li­cens­ing falls) is ex­er­cis­ing due care. He said the break-ins are of con­cern to him.

But he praised the cur­rent se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus in place which led to the break-ins be­ing de­tect­ed.

The in­ci­dents came months af­ter Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said se­cu­ri­ty was strength­ened at the Ca­roni Li­cens­ing Of­fice fol­low­ing an ar­son at­tack last No­vem­ber.

Fire of­fi­cials said then that pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­di­cat­ed that the fire was de­lib­er­ate­ly set with 16 ve­hi­cles be­ing dam­aged. The dam­age to the ve­hi­cles was es­ti­mat­ed at $495,000.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions in Par­lia­ment about the at­tack, Sinanan said se­cu­ri­ty was “beefed up” at the Ca­roni of­fice, promis­ing to make some “ma­jor an­nounce­ments” lat­er.

“The Li­cence Of­fice at Ca­roni has armed se­cu­ri­ty 24/7, which con­ducts pe­ri­od­ic and ran­dom pa­trols dur­ing the course of the day and night. In ad­di­tion, the com­pound is out­fit­ted with CCTV cam­eras to de­tect in­stances of wrong­do­ing. Cur­rent­ly, an as­sess­ment is be­ing done with the as­sis­tance of law en­force­ment agen­cies with a view to as­cer­tain what ad­di­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty may be need­ed and to make rec­om­men­da­tions for the way for­ward,” he added.