An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing in­to an ear­ly morn­ing ar­son at­tack at the Li­cens­ing Of­fice in Ca­roni, which de­stroyed 14 ve­hi­cles that were im­pound­ed in re­la­tion to mat­ters cur­rent­ly un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clark said he learned of the blaze around 4 am af­ter be­ing con­tact­ed by fa­cil­i­ties per­son­nel.

Clark said the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer on du­ty re­port­ed hear­ing an ex­plo­sion pri­or to the fire.

“Dur­ing his pa­trol, he (se­cu­ri­ty guard) ob­served there was a fire in the area where the ve­hi­cles are im­pound­ed,” Clarke said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

While fire of­fi­cers were able to get the blaze un­der con­trol, the Com­mis­sion­er said, “As a re­sult of the na­ture of what they saw, the TTPS got in­volved.”

Say­ing that the mat­ter was now re­ceiv­ing the full at­ten­tion of both the T&T Fire Ser­vice and the TTPS, Clark de­nied sug­ges­tions that the blaze was re­lat­ed to elec­tri­cal main­te­nance work that was car­ried out at the lo­ca­tion on Fri­day.

The Ca­roni Li­cens­ing Of­fice was closed at 2.15 pm on Fri­day (No­vem­ber 24) to fa­cil­i­tate rou­tine main­te­nance work.

“It is not any­thing re­lat­ed to the elec­tri­cal up­dates, which went smooth­ly,” he said.

De­spite the fire, Li­cens­ing is ex­pect­ed to re­sume nor­mal op­er­a­tions to­day.

Be­sides the dam­age to the im­pound­ed cars, the fire did not de­stroy any of the build­ing’s in­fra­struc­ture, but wa­ter dam­age was said to have oc­curred as a re­sult of the ef­forts by fire­fight­ers to con­tain the blaze.

Clark added, “I do have some se­ri­ous con­cerns with what ap­pears to be the cause of that fire.”

Point­ing out that the en­tire Ca­roni com­pound was out­fit­ted with CCTV cam­eras, he re­vealed, “We would have gath­ered cer­tain in­for­ma­tion which will be of in­ter­est to the TTPS.”

Pressed to say more about the blaze and what may have led to it, the Com­mis­sion­er re­it­er­at­ed that the mat­ter was un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted, “It ap­pears as though one ve­hi­cle in par­tic­u­lar was tar­get­ed, and the fire would have spread from there.”

Asked what he felt may have been the mo­tive for the at­tack, the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er ex­plained that his of­fice was, “re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing that all ve­hi­cles on the na­tion’s roads are du­ly reg­is­tered and meet the cri­te­ria for what they were orig­i­nal­ly reg­is­tered for.”

He praised the new in­spec­tion sys­tem for root­ing out cor­rupt prac­tices sur­round­ing the reg­is­tra­tion of ve­hi­cles and oth­er as­so­ci­at­ed ac­tiv­i­ties.

Clark said, “Be­cause of what we have put in place, we have been iden­ti­fy­ing a num­ber of ve­hi­cles that ei­ther might have been found with a tam­pered chas­sis, ve­hi­cles which have been reg­is­tered twice.

“We have been find­ing ve­hi­cles that were re­port­ed stolen and resur­faced in­to the en­vi­ron­ment, and as the Trans­port Com­mis­sion, we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ex­er­cise due dili­gence to treat with these mat­ters and bring it to the po­lice at­ten­tion.”

Clark said the dam­aged im­pound­ed ve­hi­cles all formed part of in­ves­ti­ga­tions cur­rent­ly be­ing car­ried out by the TTPS, which in­clud­ed gath­er­ing of foren­sic ev­i­dence and ef­forts to ob­tain prop­er trac­ing/trans­fer doc­u­ments.

Say­ing the af­fect­ed ve­hi­cle own­ers had not been no­ti­fied up to yes­ter­day, he promised this process would take place with­in a day or two, as da­ta gath­er­ing was still be­ing done.

“The TTPS and the Fire Ser­vice are still do­ing their checks and bal­ances. They have asked for cer­tain in­for­ma­tion and as a re­sult of that, we have been cur­tailed in what we can put out at this point in time.”

Fol­low­ing yes­ter­day’s in­ci­dent, Clark as­sured, “Se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures will be stepped up. In ad­di­tion to what we have, such as the CCTV cam­eras and reg­u­lar pa­trols...we have to thank the IT De­part­ment of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, which re­cent­ly im­ple­ment­ed some high-end se­cu­ri­ty cam­eras on the com­pound, which has helped us to pro­vide the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion to the au­thor­i­ties.”