PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

The UTURN Soft­ware Man­age­ment Sys­tem which in­tro­duces a De­mer­it Point Sys­tem for mo­torists across the coun­try goes live to­day.

“This new mod­ern tech­no­log­i­cal plat­form will al­low for the full im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act No. 9 of 2017 for the in­tro­duc­tion of a De­mer­it Points Sys­tem, new Traf­fic Tick­et­ing Sys­tem, and Red-Light Cam­era En­force­ment Sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” a re­lease from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port sys­tem.

In­tro­duc­tion of the soft­ware, which fa­cil­i­tates the process for mo­torists to be no­ti­fied via mail af­ter be­ing caught in breach of traf­fic reg­u­la­tions on cam­era, al­so in­volves dis­tri­b­u­tion of new Hand­held Mo­bile Traf­fic Tick­et­ing De­vices to of­fi­cers of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS), Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion and Traf­fic War­den Di­vi­sion, which will be put in­to use.”

The min­istry said en­force­ment of­fi­cers “will utilise these new hand­held de­vices to is­sue traf­fic vi­o­la­tion warn­ings and fur­ther sen­si­tise the gen­er­al pub­lic on the penal­ties and de­mer­it points as­so­ci­at­ed with the new sys­tem. The Min­istry will al­so com­mence the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the new and sim­pli­fied Car­bon­less Fixed Penal­ty Traf­fic Tick­et Books to law en­force­ment of­fi­cers. These new books will re­place the old traf­fic tick­et books.”

The sys­tem has been in test­ing for sev­er­al weeks, be­fore the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the soft­ware to­day.

“As the UTURN Sys­tem goes live, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port will sub­mit a note to Cab­i­net with a re­port con­tain­ing a rec­om­men­da­tion for the procla­ma­tion of the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act No. 9 of 2017 on April 02, 2020,” the re­lease con­tin­ued,

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan said more will be said con­cern­ing the sys­tem at a press con­fer­ence to­day. He, how­ev­er, was dis­ap­point­ed by ru­mours be­ing spread that the Curepe In­ter­change bridge had col­lapsed when in fact rou­tine work was be­ing done on the in­ter­change. Yes­ter­day sev­er­al dri­vers were con­fused when they ap­proached the in­ter­change as many were forced to re­verse along the west­bound lane to take an al­ter­na­tive route.

“We have been ad­ver­tis­ing for the last sev­en days, that this week­end we would have closed off the high­way un­der the bridge,” said Sinanan.

“We cast the deck­ing about three weeks ago, and we have to take off the deck­ing. Once you take off the deck­ing you have to close off the road be­cause it would be un­safe for com­muters who tra­verse be­low the bridge. That is all it is.

“What they did dur­ing the week, they took down the ends of it and some­body made a video to say oh it had col­lapsed. No, they tak­ing it down, to­day they had to take off the ac­tu­al cen­tre lanes. So it’s just a mat­ter of clos­ing off the in­ter­change to take off the deck­ing.”

Sinanan said the ru­mours were “just a lot of peo­ple try­ing to make pan­ic.”