Carisa Lee

Af­ter two months of clo­sure, Li­cens­ing of­fices across T&T re­opened their doors yes­ter­day.

“I came to do a trans­fer this morn­ing and it was won­der­ful… we just had to wait for the com­put­er to up­date and that was it,” cus­tomer Michelle said out­side the Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain of­fice.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed both South and Port-of-Spain of­fices yes­ter­day, there were no crowds and most cus­tomers de­scribed the process as smooth.

“It was to me very per­fect, plen­ty pro­to­cols tak­ing place and al­so they have like plen­ty so­cial dis­tanc­ing, sani­tis­ing and thing, so I felt safe,” said Josi­ah Per­ry, who re­ceived his first dri­ving per­mit yes­ter­day.

Some cus­tomers, who made ap­point­ments be­fore the clo­sure in May, had to reap­ply.

In San Fer­nan­do, work­ers at­tend­ed to cus­tomers out­side of build­ing, greet­ing some as they as they ar­rived.

“The per­son now giv­ing me the form there, I have to go and full out the form,” one cus­tomer said just be­fore re­ceiv­ing fur­ther in­struc­tions from an em­ploy­ee.

But the re­open­ing of the of­fices and com­pounds did not on­ly ben­e­fit cus­tomers and em­ploy­ees.

Lar­ry Duprey is a self-em­ployed work­er at the Li­cens­ing com­pound in Port-of-Spain.

He paints on the signs and weights for ve­hi­cles ahead of in­spec­tion and while the first day was not very ac­tive, he was hap­py for the re­sump­tion of what he called his es­sen­tial busi­ness.

“I doh (sic) ex­pect things to be bright at this point in time but as times go by, things will pick up, as you see the car park is emp­ty… things are re­al slow, no work as yet,” he said.

Duprey said while he does not have too many re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, the last two months were chal­leng­ing.

“I just had was to see bout (sic) my­self...I did not had it as rough as some peo­ple but it was al­so rough for me you know?” he ex­plained.