Sec­re­tary of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), As­sem­bly­man Trevor James, says of­fi­cers from the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion in Trinidad will be blocked from ac­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties in To­ba­go if they re­turn to the is­land to con­duct any form of ac­tiv­i­ty.

This de­vel­op­ment comes af­ter months of com­plaints from mem­bers of the THA and peo­ple on the is­land that the of­fi­cers were vis­it­ing the is­land and tar­get­ing dri­vers for what they termed to be mi­nor in­frac­tions dur­ing road traf­fic ex­er­cis­es.

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine had al­so heav­i­ly crit­i­cised the di­vi­sion af­ter his wife was stopped for dri­ving with­out per­mit.

At the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty launch in Scar­bor­ough on Sun­day night, James told sup­port­ers that the “white shirts” were again com­ing to To­ba­go de­spite what the law says.

In giv­ing ex­am­ples of some of the in­con­ve­niences ex­pe­ri­enced, he claimed the of­fi­cers would stop peo­ple near the air­port and pre­vent peo­ple from mak­ing their flights on time, forc­ing them to pay a re­book­ing fee of $50 in the process.

“It seems as though they feel it is their right to con­tra­vene our rights in To­ba­go,” James said.

He claimed this was all be­cause the peo­ple of To­ba­go made a choice on De­cem­ber 6, 2021, “and they de­cid­ed to pun­ish us.”

James then had a mes­sage for Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke.

“I want all of you to tell (Ro­han) Sinanan and this fel­la (sic) (Clive) Clarke that the next time they come to To­ba­go and they en (sic) talk to me or FC (Far­ley Chavez) Au­gus­tine, they bet­ter bring a mo­bile unit be­cause our of­fices are out of bounds for them. Out of bounds,” James said.

He said the THA will ad­vise its se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers to stop the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion of­fi­cers out­side the gate at the Di­vi­sion of Agri­cul­ture, a fa­cil­i­ty where they usu­al­ly op­er­ate from.

“They too out of place,” he said.

James said the gen­e­sis of the prob­lem against To­ba­go was the THA vi­sion which has been put for­ward by the ex­ec­u­tive, of which he is a part.

When the mat­ter arose in April, Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clarke said his of­fi­cers were there to save lives and to pro­mote safe­ty. He said dur­ing the ex­er­cis­es, they were tak­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ed­u­cate the pub­lic by pro­vid­ing cer­tain lit­er­a­ture they thought was of val­ue. He al­so ex­plained that mem­bers of the pub­lic could fa­mil­iarise them­selves with the new fixed-penal­ty sys­tem.