Joel Julien

What's the dif­fer­ence be­tween a dri­ver's per­mit and a dri­ver's li­cence?

Well, the one you cur­rent­ly have in your pos­ses­sion from the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port is a dri­ver's per­mit.

But the next one you get will be a dri­ver's li­cence.

"Con­tin­u­ing with its thrust to mod­ernise and en­hance ser­vices, busi­ness process­es and op­er­at­ing sys­tems at the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion, on Fri­day 8 Ju­ly 2022, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port launched the new Dri­ver's Li­cence mark­ing the tran­si­tion from the for­mer 'Dri­ver's Per­mit," the MOWT stat­ed in a re­lease to­day.

This new form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion al­lows for greater con­sis­ten­cy and align­ment with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards, it stat­ed.

"The tran­si­tion from a 'Dri­ver's Per­mit' to a 'Dri­ver's Li­cence' will al­so im­prove re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al au­thor­i­ties' recog­ni­tion of an au­then­tic dri­ving li­cence is­sued by the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er and the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go," it stat­ed.

The new Dri­ver’s Li­cence card in­cor­po­rates mul­ti­ple lay­ers of de­fence pro­vid­ing a so­phis­ti­cat­ed ar­ray of se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures through­out the card that in­hib­it tam­per­ing and coun­ter­feit­ing.

On the front of the new Dri­ver’s Li­cence card, the im­age of the dri­ver is in colour. Un­der the main pho­to, the sig­na­ture of the hold­er is vis­i­ble. The front of the card has a se­cure Guil­loche pat­tern and mi­cro text. 

There is a small ghost im­age of the hold­er to the bot­tom right of the card which is al­so in colour and iden­ti­cal to the main im­age.

On the re­verse of the card, bar code tech­nol­o­gy is used for added se­cu­ri­ty that is in­te­grat­ed with our cen­tralised data­base sys­tem pro­vid­ing a so­phis­ti­cat­ed, foren­sic-lev­el se­cu­ri­ty fea­ture.

The Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion says it will in­tro­duce this new doc­u­ment/card on a phased ba­sis.

"In the ini­tial phase, the new li­cence will be avail­able to per­sons con­duct­ing cur­rent trans­ac­tions. The Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion will utilise a dual sys­tem that al­lows for the use of both doc­u­ments/cards- the ex­ist­ing Dri­ver's Per­mit and the new Dri­ver's Li­cence- un­til the pre­vi­ous­ly-is­sued Dri­ver's Per­mits are com­plete­ly phased out," it stat­ed.

The MOWT stat­ed that the new Dri­ver's Li­cence does not in­val­i­date the ex­ist­ing Dri­ver's Per­mit and cit­i­zens are not re­quired to change/re­new their old/ ex­ist­ing Dri­ver's Per­mit un­til it is due to ex­pire.