Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

De­spite moves to crack down on cor­rup­tion at the Trans­port Di­vi­sion’s Li­cens­ing of­fices, sev­er­al em­ploy­ees say fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ties—rang­ing from small-time bribes from touts for cer­ti­fied copies to unau­tho­rised ve­hi­cle trans­fers and du­pli­ca­tion of li­cense plates—con­tin­ue in the or­gan­i­sa­tion.

The Sun­day Guardian spoke to sev­er­al em­ploy­ees whose names or po­si­tions can­not be re­vealed out of con­cern for their jobs and safe­ty.

Some em­ploy­ees said that while there has been a con­cert­ed ef­fort in the di­vi­sion un­der Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke to tack­le cor­rup­tion, it re­mains part of the or­gan­i­sa­tion’s cul­ture.

Ear­li­er this month, two staff mem­bers—Li­cens­ing Of­fi­cer Er­rol Su­per­sad and Tem­po­rary Clerk I Sudesh Rad­hakissoon—who worked at the Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain of­fice, were charged with mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice. They were ac­cused of over­see­ing an unau­tho­rised ve­hi­cle trans­fer.

The em­ploy­ees de­scribed the ar­rests as “a show”, ask­ing, “What about the rest?”

“You can’t get away from it, and you can’t get rid of all the em­ploy­ees. It’s un­der­stood. For ex­am­ple, when the touts come in to get cer­ti­fied copies, you of­ten get $100 with the re­ceipt. What am I go­ing to do? Give them back?” one em­ploy­ee asked.

“You could be the right­eous one, but you will like­ly end up suf­fer­ing. You will be liv­ing on a nor­mal salary and every­one else would be dri­ving an ex­pen­sive ve­hi­cle, eat­ing the best food, liv­ing nice­ly, trav­el­ling the world, and if you do the right thing, you suf­fer. So it is very dif­fi­cult to walk that path, but peo­ple don’t re­alise that,” an­oth­er em­ploy­ee said.

Ac­cord­ing to the em­ploy­ees, Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion has its own cul­ture.

They ad­mit­ted that Com­mis­sion­er Clarke’s poli­cies have seen a de­cline in cor­rup­tion, say­ing that in the past, it was far more ram­pant.

The em­ploy­ees said with the new sys­tem, one per­son is no longer re­spon­si­ble for over­see­ing the en­tire process from be­gin­ning to end, al­low­ing for more checks and bal­ances.

They es­ti­mat­ed that around 50 to 60 per cent of Li­cens­ing/Trans­port Di­vi­sion work­ers are scrupu­lous.

The of­fi­cers ad­mit­ted, how­ev­er, that they can­not con­firm that even those they be­lieve are clean are in­deed above board.

They said while the changes have made it more dif­fi­cult to “run bobol”, peo­ple found their way around the sys­tem. They said once some­one be­comes ac­quaint­ed with an of­fi­cer or a clerk and enough mon­ey is passed, any­thing is pos­si­ble.

“What they (cor­rupt of­fi­cers) tend to do is, let’s say, for ex­am­ple, you want to do a trans­fer. You want to pay for it, but you don’t want to come in and go through the whole process. You (as the client) and I (as the cor­rupt of­fi­cer) would do the trans­fer and that’s that. There’s no one to re­port any is­sues there be­cause we would both be at fault, and we don’t want that in­for­ma­tion out.

“How­ev­er, if some­one in your fam­i­ly pass­es away and there’s a third par­ty who wants to buy your de­ceased rel­a­tive’s ve­hi­cle, you con­nect with an of­fi­cer to trans­fer the ve­hi­cle. But your broth­er want­ed the ve­hi­cle, so he will won­der how the ve­hi­cle end­ed up be­ing trans­ferred in­to the third par­ty’s name. He will then re­port it.

“When they (the au­thor­i­ties) do the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, they may say this man is dead, he could not have trans­ferred the ve­hi­cle. So they go through the file and that’s where some em­ploy­ees end up get­ting caught. The on­ly rea­son it would be high­light­ed or in­ves­ti­gat­ed is if some­one queries it,” an em­ploy­ee said.

Licensing officers conduct a road exercise along Independence Square, Port-of-Spain, last November.

KERWIN PIERRE

The em­ploy­ees lament­ed that the rel­a­tive­ly low salaries paid in the di­vi­sion con­tribute to the like­li­hood of work­ers tak­ing bribes.

They es­ti­mat­ed that a Clerk I car­ries home be­tween $5,000 to $6,000 a month, while the av­er­age of­fi­cer earns less than $10,000 a month.

Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion work­ers are rep­re­sent­ed by the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA). The Gov­ern­ment has of­fered a salary in­crease of four per cent for the ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­ods: 2014 to 2017, as well as from 2017 to 2020. PSA Pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste has re­ject­ed the of­fer, call­ing it in­suf­fi­cient. The Li­cens­ing sources agreed, say­ing four per cent would not do any­thing to im­prove their stan­dard of liv­ing.

“For ex­am­ple, one of the ex­pe­ri­enced of­fi­cers’ name has been men­tioned in a lot of things, but they can’t prove any­thing yet. You hear so many things. For in­stance, the ve­hi­cle num­ber du­pli­cates is­sue, the on­ly way you could get that is from peo­ple who are high up in the sys­tem. So it’s like pol­i­tics in some ways—I can’t say you are thiev­ing be­cause I am thiev­ing too.

“We know of an of­fi­cer who is black­list­ed in a cer­tain di­vi­sion be­cause he/she not do­ing what the oth­ers are do­ing. He/she is treat­ed very dif­fer­ent­ly be­cause they are not in­to cor­rup­tion. He/she had their life threat­ened,” an em­ploy­ee lament­ed. The em­ploy­ees were re­luc­tant to give out any spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion about in­stances of cor­rup­tion out of con­cern for their safe­ty and the safe­ty of their col­leagues.

A truck makes its way into the loading bay at the Licensing Division, San Fernando, to be inspected last January.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

The two men ac­cused of over­see­ing an unau­tho­rised ve­hi­cle trans­fer ear­li­er this month were the first Li­cens­ing of­fi­cers to be charged in 2023, ac­cord­ing to the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er.

The em­ploy­ees are ac­cused of fraud­u­lent­ly sign­ing and prepar­ing ve­hi­cle trans­fer doc­u­ments. They were ar­rest­ed on Oc­to­ber 2 and grant­ed bail. They are ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a Port-of-Spain Mag­is­trates’ Court on Oc­to­ber 24.

Guardian Me­dia sought to find out from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice how many Li­cens­ing of­fi­cers were charged with of­fences in the last three years but did not re­ceive a re­sponse.

In late 2020, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan re­vealed that 20 em­ploy­ees were un­der sus­pen­sion and in­ves­ti­ga­tion for un­eth­i­cal prac­tices, while in late 2019, two for­mer Li­cens­ing em­ploy­ees were among five peo­ple charged with con­spir­ing to de­fraud the State by mak­ing false en­tries on the Trans­port Min­istry’s li­cens­ing data­base.

It is no se­cret that the Trans­port Di­vi­sion’s Li­cens­ing of­fices have long had a rep­u­ta­tion for be­ing a hub for cor­rup­tion, as ac­knowl­edged by sev­er­al for­mer and present min­is­ters of Works and Trans­port and Com­mis­sion­ers of Trans­port. In Oc­to­ber 2019, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan pledged to clean up cor­rup­tion in the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion by in­tro­duc­ing im­proved tech­nol­o­gy to of­fices.

“With tech­nol­o­gy be­ing used we could min­imise the un­eth­i­cal prac­tices tak­ing place at the Li­cense (sic) Of­fice. Be­cause I am not go­ing to put my head in the sand and say the Li­cense of­fice is the best place on earth. It is not, but we in­tend to take the fight on and clean up the Li­cense Of­fice,” he had said.

Com­mis­sion­er Clarke echoed the min­is­ter’s sen­ti­ments when un­veil­ing new up­grades to the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion’s sys­tem in April 2022. The up­grades in­clud­ed chang­ing the li­cens­ing sys­tem from a pa­per-based to a com­put­erised one.

“I have dis­cov­ered there are a num­ber of per­sons walk­ing around with fraud­u­lent doc­u­ments such as fraud­u­lent dri­ver’s per­mits, cer­ti­fied copies, fraud­u­lent ap­provals from the com­mis­sion­er to use horns on their ve­hi­cles. I have dis­cov­ered most of these doc­u­ments were not gen­er­at­ed in the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion. In oth­er words, the tint cer­tifi­cate we are giv­ing, some­one could go and make that and show it to a law en­force­ment of­fi­cer,” Clarke had said.

In May 2012, for­mer trans­port min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj said that four Li­cens­ing of­fi­cers were ar­rest­ed by po­lice of­fi­cers who were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the il­le­gal im­por­ta­tion and reg­is­tra­tion of ve­hi­cles. For­mer trans­port com­mis­sion­er Reuben Cato had said cor­rup­tion would re­main as long as the sys­tem was not com­put­erised.

Rigid mea­sures to tack­le cor­rup­tion–Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Transport Commissioner Clive Clarke

INNIS FRANCIS

Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke is hell-bent on root­ing out un­scrupu­lous be­hav­iours in and out­side the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion.

Clarke said if he fails to tack­le wrong­do­ing and il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties, then he would be part of the prob­lem.

On Fri­day, Clarke spoke about some of the rigid mea­sures he had to im­ple­ment to im­prove the di­vi­sion’s ser­vices and make the state-run or­gan­i­sa­tion which falls un­der the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port ac­count­able and trans­par­ent.

The tight­en­ing of ve­hi­cle trans­fers and du­pli­ca­tion of dri­ver’s per­mits were two ar­eas Clarke fo­cused on.

“We have im­ple­ment­ed cer­tain rules and busi­ness process­es that must hap­pen be­fore cer­tain trans­ac­tions take place.”

Clarke, who said he pre­ferred to use the words “un­scrupu­lous be­hav­iour” in­stead of cor­rupt prac­tices said, “We have im­ple­ment­ed a sys­tem where your dri­ver’s per­mit will not print un­less you par­tic­i­pate in the pro­vi­sion­al per­mit re­quire­ment and the reg­u­la­tion’s test. In oth­er words, you must be present.”

Clarke said they have been view­ing com­ments in the pub­lic do­main that ve­hi­cles are not doc­u­ment­ed on their sys­tem when they vis­it an in­spec­tion garage.

“To in­spect a ve­hi­cle a cou­ple of years ago you were re­quired to car­ry a cer­ti­fied copy and that garage or whoso­ev­er will in­spect your ve­hi­cle. We had per­sons walk­ing around with bo­gus cer­ti­fied copies of stolen ve­hi­cles and ve­hi­cles that were du­pli­cat­ed and so forth. And there­fore those ve­hi­cles were in­spect­ed for years. We have since cur­tailed that. We had sit­u­a­tions where the min­istry by its poor process­es al­lowed these types of trans­ac­tions to take place.”

He said they de­vel­oped a sys­tem “that these test­ing sta­tions can on­ly in­spect your ve­hi­cles when your record has a lev­el of ac­cu­ra­cy.”

Clarke said if a sta­tion choos­es to in­spect a ve­hi­cle with­out ac­cu­ra­cy they will know and ac­tion can be tak­en against the sta­tion op­er­a­tor.

“So far we have re­cov­ered over 75 stolen ve­hi­cles be­cause of this new in­spec­tion sys­tem. Sad­ly, we have seen sit­u­a­tions where ve­hi­cles have been lit­er­al­ly reg­is­tered twice, with two num­bers, but the same chas­sis num­bers. What we did? We digi­tised the en­tire pack­age so that when these ve­hi­cles resur­face we can treat the mat­ter. And there­fore these are the mech­a­nisms we have been us­ing.”

Clarke urged the pub­lic to re­port any dis­hon­est act to the po­lice.

As the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion un­der­goes a ma­jor trans­for­ma­tion ex­er­cise, Clarke ad­mits that he has been faced with chal­lenges.

“There will al­ways be dif­fi­cul­ties. The com­mis­sion­er is not im­mune to that. We have been find­ing ways to over­come these chal­lenges.”

Opt­ing not to dwell on the re­cent ar­rest and charge of a Li­cens­ing Of­fi­cer, cler­i­cal work­er and mem­ber of the pub­lic, Clarke said as the di­vi­sion tries to im­prove its ser­vices and root out wrong­do­ing at times “the chips may fall where they may”.

“I as trans­port com­mis­sion­er, once some­thing is brought to my at­ten­tion and there is sub­stan­tial ev­i­dence to treat with it. I have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. If I don’t treat with it, then I am part of the prob­lem. I would take any is­sue in terms of ap­par­ent mis­be­hav­iour very se­ri­ous­ly. And there­fore that is our mantra.”

In the last few months, Clarke said his staff has been wel­com­ing the changes and try­ing to elim­i­nate strange prac­tices.

 Clarke be­lieves that “Once we have mech­a­nisms that can trace, track and pro­vide a lev­el of ac­count­abil­i­ty it will cre­ate a lev­el of de­ter­rence with­in the sys­tem.”