KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

There was con­fu­sion and frus­tra­tion at Li­cens­ing of­fices across Trinidad yes­ter­day, as mo­torists com­plained of be­ing blind­sided by the Gov­ern­ment’s hefty late fee in­creas­es when re­new­ing their dri­ver’s per­mits.

In a mem­o­ran­dum dat­ed Jan­u­ary 2, Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke ad­vised that mo­torists with ex­pired per­mits will now face penal­ties rang­ing from $500 to $3,500.

The memo ex­plained that in ac­cor­dance with the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act, Chap­ter 48:50, per­mits which have been ex­pired for six months or less will in­cur a $600 penal­ty, in ad­di­tion to the $500 fee for a five-year re­new­al or $1,000 fee for a 10-year re­new­al.

Per­mits ex­pired for more than six months but less than three years will cost an ad­di­tion­al $1,000, and per­mits ex­pired for three to five years will face a $3,500 penal­ty.

Mo­torists with ex­pired per­mits due to be­ing ab­sent from the coun­try for six months to three years now have a $600 penal­ty with pass­port proof, and per­mits ex­pired for more than five years will in­cur a $650 late fee, with dri­vers hav­ing to re­do a dri­ving test.

But crowds at the Li­cens­ing of­fices said they had no idea of the ad­just­ments.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain branch yes­ter­day, one mo­torist from Freeport lament­ed that the ad­di­tion­al fees were ex­treme­ly un­fair to law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

“The ex­pe­ri­ence at the Li­cens­ing Of­fice is very, very not nice be­cause every­thing has gone up by more than dou­ble … Now if there’s a price change, they need to put it on their sys­tem so peo­ple could be able to see it and them could be able to see it. Them (work­ers) say­ing they not see­ing noth­ing, so ba­si­cal­ly what they are do­ing is just charg­ing peo­ple what they want to charge peo­ple. That is what they are do­ing,” the man, who did not want to be iden­ti­fied, said.

“A per­son who’s a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen have to pay this mon­ey, right? A per­son who’s not a law-abid­ing cit­i­zen, them don’t want a li­cence. They will dri­ve with­out li­cence. They will dri­ve with­out in­sur­ance. We’re law-abid­ing cit­i­zens. This, I swear to you, I just paid be­cause I need to be on the road. You un­der­stand? I need to drop my chil­dren to school. I need to be from point A to point B. You un­der­stand? That is the on­ly rea­son I paid this.”

He added, “The Prime Min­is­ter say when she win elec­tion, every­body win, right? She said that the fines in the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go were too high. She go­ing to re­duce the fines. What it is they’re do­ing for peo­ple in the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go? If you re­duce the fines, how come we had to pay this kind of fee this morn­ing in the Li­cens­ing Of­fice? This is not fair. What are they do­ing to poor peo­ple? How poor peo­ple sup­posed to sur­vive in this coun­try?”

An­oth­er mo­torist said, “I have my tick­et here to show that it’s $1,100 I pay, which is not right, and if it’s some­thing that they im­ple­ment­ing, a new thing, they sup­posed to let the pub­lic know so we know what we were com­ing to to­day, but you can see that it was just a makeshift thing be­cause they ain’t have noth­ing in place for the change that they made.”

Oth­er mo­torists com­plained that they vis­it­ed the of­fice last week be­fore their ex­piry dates but were told to re­turn on an­oth­er date be­cause the staff stopped tak­ing cus­tomers when the lines got too long.

Some mo­torists al­so com­plained that even af­ter pay­ing the penal­ties, they had to en­dure hours of wait­ing to re­ceive their new per­mits be­cause work­ers said they did not know how to process the pay­ment be­cause the sys­tem was not up­dat­ed to in­clude late fees.

Off cam­era, one Li­cens­ing of­fi­cer said work­ers were on­ly in­formed of the changes on Sun­day via cell­phone mes­sages.

Sim­i­lar­ly, mo­torists at the Ca­roni of­fice said they were al­so left in the dark, as there were no signs of the in­crease, nor were they in­formed, even af­ter wait­ing hours in line.

Za­k­our: An­nounce­ment made since De­cem­ber

How­ev­er, con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Za­k­our Ali said this was noth­ing new, not­ing the penal­ties were an­nounced since ear­ly De­cem­ber.

Ali said, “There was al­ways a fee for a li­cence even pri­or to the in­crease; there was a fee, so it’s not a new fine. Re­gard­ing the staff stat­ing that they were not aware, they were aware of the in­creas­es, and re­gard­ing per­sons say­ing they were not aware that this was in the Fi­nance Bill, that was in both Hous­es of Par­lia­ment in ear­ly De­cem­ber. I ac­tu­al­ly spoke of this when I was in the Sen­ate when I spoke that day. I al­so spoke of this. This is in Sec­tion 61A.”

He added, “I know the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er did an­nounce that there are per­sons who in­di­cat­ed that be­cause they are one day late, they don’t qual­i­fy for the 10-year re­new­al. You would have seen that. That is false. That’s false in­for­ma­tion.”

Com­mis­sion­er Clarke al­so de­nied claims that dri­vers were be­ing charged the late penal­ty fee and be­ing told that even a one-day de­lay au­to­mat­i­cal­ly dis­qual­i­fied them from re­new­ing for 10 years.

Clarke said, “We do not pre­vent any­one from re­new­ing their per­mit for 10 years sub­se­quent­ly when a de­lay is ap­plied. That is not a prac­tice of Li­cens­ing.”

Pen­ny blasts Govt over more in­creas­es

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les al­so crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment for the in­crease in late penal­ties.

Beck­les said, “The coun­try is wit­ness­ing and forced to di­gest yet an­oth­er dis­turb­ing ex­am­ple of a Gov­ern­ment that is care­less, cal­lous and com­plete­ly dis­con­nect­ed from the lived day-to-day re­al­i­ty of or­di­nary cit­i­zens of this coun­try. Mo­torists across the coun­try were blind­sided by the sud­den im­ple­men­ta­tion of late fees, fees that were in­tro­duced qui­et­ly, like a thief in the night, with­out prop­er pub­lic no­tice, with­out stake­hold­er en­gage­ment, and ap­par­ent­ly with­out even in­form­ing the front­line work­ers ex­pect­ed to en­force it.”

She added, “That alone speaks vol­umes about the in­com­pe­tence and poor plan­ning that are con­sis­tent with and have come to de­fine this ad­min­is­tra­tion. ... Even more alarm­ing is that some Li­cens­ing of­fice staff them­selves seemed to have been un­aware of the de­tails of the change and could not process the fees on the sys­tem. This is not gov­er­nance, you know. This is chaos.”

She said a re­spon­si­ble Gov­ern­ment would have en­sured clear, ad­vanced com­mu­ni­ca­tion to the pub­lic and the me­dia, prop­er sys­tem readi­ness be­fore im­ple­men­ta­tion and fair tran­si­tion arrange­ments to avoid pe­nal­is­ing law-abid­ing cit­i­zens.

As such, she called on the gov­ern­ment to apol­o­gise to the coun­try.