Joshua Seemu­n­gal

It is pos­si­ble for dri­vers with more than 20 de­mer­it points un­der the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port De­mer­it Points Sys­tem to con­tin­ue dri­ving for months un­til the Trans­port Di­vi­sion catch­es up with them.

Last week, Guardian Me­dia was in­formed that a 61-year-old busi­ness­man was dri­ving for sev­er­al months de­spite hav­ing 37 de­mer­it points on his record.

Guardian Me­dia called the busi­ness­man’s phone num­ber on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions to find out how he was still able to dri­ve de­spite hav­ing 37 de­mer­it points on his li­cense—near­ly dou­ble the 20 points re­quired for a two-year li­cense sus­pen­sion.

How­ev­er, the per­son who an­swered the phone, in a sus­pi­cious tone, claimed that he was an em­ploy­ee of the busi­ness­man and not the busi­ness­man him­self.

De­spite leav­ing mes­sages for the busi­ness­man to get his re­spons­es to claims against him, Guardian Me­dia nev­er re­ceived a call­back.

Last Thurs­day, how­ev­er, the 61-year-old San­gre Chiq­ui­to res­i­dent re­port­ed to the Ca­roni Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion Of­fice.

Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke said: “You will find one or two peo­ple with that amount of de­mer­it points on the road, and it re­al­ly al­lows that win­dow to have that op­por­tu­ni­ty, be­cause re­mem­ber there’s no judge in­volved in that process, and you don’t want to breach peo­ple’s con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. So, you give them the op­por­tu­ni­ty to show cause as to whether they com­mit­ted the of­fence or not.”

Clarke said, how­ev­er, re­fused to com­ment specif­i­cal­ly on the busi­ness­man’s case.

Ac­cord­ing to a se­nior source at the Li­cens­ing Of­fice, the 61-year-old dri­ver, who is per­mit­ted to dri­ve heavy and light mo­tor ve­hi­cles, re­ceived nu­mer­ous tick­ets since the de­mer­it sys­tem came in­to ef­fect in May 2020.

The tick­ets in­clud­ed dri­ving on the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route with­out a per­mit—which re­sults in six de­mer­it points, as well as speed­ing tick­ets—an of­fence which car­ries four de­mer­it points.

De­spite re­port­ing to the li­cens­ing au­thor­i­ty, how­ev­er, the dri­ver will not be sus­pend­ed from dri­ving at least not yet.

Ac­cord­ing to the de­mer­it point sys­tem, an ac­cused dri­ver must first re­ceive a let­ter from the au­thor­i­ty, via TTPost, no­ti­fy­ing them that he has a cer­tain quan­ti­ty of de­mer­it points.

Then the dri­ver will have 14 days to query or give cause for their al­leged of­fences.

The busi­ness­man on­ly re­ceived his let­ter af­ter re­port­ing to the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion Of­fice last Thurs­day.

Three pre­vi­ous at­tempts by the di­vi­sion to serve him the let­ter failed af­ter a TTPost postal work­er was un­able to de­liv­er the no­ti­fi­ca­tion suc­cess­ful­ly.

“Some per­sons at­tempt to evade the process. So if TTPost comes to de­liv­er a let­ter, be­cause you have to sign for it, they may not take the let­ter. How­ev­er, TTPost records that in their sys­tem.

“Some­times, if the per­son is a busi­ness­man, they will tell their em­ploy­ees to not ac­cept the let­ter from TTPost when the postal work­er seeks to get the let­ter signed,” a se­nior li­cens­ing au­thor­i­ty source said.

“The ac­cused in this case lives at the ex­act ad­dress that we had for him. So some­body there would have evad­ed the cor­re­spon­dence…He is claim­ing that it was one of his work­men. When he came in to­day, we served him with his first let­ter, and the process will start from there.”

Nor­mal­ly, ac­cord­ing to li­cens­ing di­vi­sion sources, the au­thor­i­ty will at­tempt to lo­cate dri­vers evad­ing their dri­ver’s li­cense dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion no­ti­fi­ca­tion let­ter by send­ing of­fi­cers to find them on the roads.

How­ev­er, in some cas­es, as with the 61-year-old busi­ness­man, they said, they are un­able to find them as eas­i­ly as they would find a PH dri­ver on the Bus Route, for ex­am­ple.

Twice an­nu­al­ly, the au­thor­i­ty al­so pub­lish­es a list of dri­vers who can’t be lo­cat­ed in the ma­jor news­pa­pers.

Ac­cord­ing to Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke, while some may get away with it for a while, a per­son who fails to re­port to let­ters or no­tices is­sued by the li­cens­ing di­vi­sion will not be able to con­duct any trans­ac­tions at li­cens­ing of­fices.

“You will have no choice but to pay for your tick­et. So that’s how it works. Be­fore they would have tak­en you and sent you to jail. Now, we ap­ply ad­min­is­tra­tive sanc­tions. But the im­por­tant thing is that you must be able to reach the per­son through some means,” he said.

Clarke said un­der the De­mer­it Sys­tem due process must be fol­lowed.

He said while some­one may reach a cer­tain amount of de­mer­it points—that may leave them li­able to face dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion—the dri­ver is en­ti­tled to chal­lenge dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

“If you haven’t paid your tick­et, what hap­pens is that the sys­tem will in­form us of that, then the com­mis­sion­er has to write to you and say Mr John, we recog­nise you have not paid your tick­et, you have 14 days to show cause. When you show cause, the com­mis­sion­er then de­cides whether he will ap­ply sanc­tions or not,” Clarke said.

He added: “When some­body reach­es the thresh­old for de­mer­it points, what the com­mis­sion­er does—as the law re­quires—is for you to write the per­son.

“So, I write to you, in­form­ing you, you have now reached 10 or 11 de­mer­it points and, there­fore, you have to pro­vide cause as to why you shouldn’t be dis­qual­i­fied.”

He said there have been in­stances where peo­ple made suc­cess­ful chal­lenges be­cause they were able to show that their li­cens­es were fraud­u­lent­ly du­pli­cat­ed by some­one else.

Ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port, the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion process for dri­vers con­sists of sev­en steps.

Step 1—If you ac­cu­mu­late or ex­ceed the thresh­old of de­mer­it points and are sub­ject to dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion, the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty will no­ti­fy you in writ­ing pri­or to dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

Step 2—Once you re­ceive this no­ti­fi­ca­tion of im­pend­ing dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion, you can ex­plain in writ­ing to the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty, why your dri­ving per­mit should not be sus­pend­ed.

Step 3—Where you fail to show good rea­sons, the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty will in­form you of the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion. The dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion will take ef­fect four­teen (14) days af­ter the date of the no­tice.

Step 4—You will then be re­quired to sur­ren­der your dri­ving per­mit to the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to the in­struc­tions giv­en in the no­ti­fi­ca­tion let­ter [Step 1].

Step 5—Fail­ure to sur­ren­der your dri­ving per­mit to the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty is an of­fence that car­ries a fine of Five Thou­sand Dol­lars ($5,000.00) and fur­ther dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion for an ad­di­tion­al pe­ri­od of one (1) year.

Step 6—A dri­ving per­mit dis­qual­i­fied by the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty dur­ing the pe­ri­od of sus­pen­sion, will be in­valid. You are com­mit­ting an of­fence if you dri­ve while your dri­ving per­mit has been sus­pend­ed

Step 7—When the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion pe­ri­od ex­pires, all de­mer­it points record­ed against your dri­ving per­mit record will be ex­punged or re­moved.

CLICK FOR MORE NEWS