RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke says there is an en­ti­ty op­er­at­ing in T&T which is is­su­ing fraud­u­lent dri­vers per­mits, not record­ed on the Li­cens­ing De­part­ment’s data­base.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia ex­clu­sive­ly dur­ing Op­er­a­tion Im­pact, joint po­lice and li­cens­ing road­block yes­ter­day, Com­mis­sion­er Clarke said those in­volved in this en­ti­ty will be caught as the Trans­port Di­vi­sion now has the tech­nol­o­gy to iden­ti­fy fraud­u­lent per­mits.

Clarke re­vealed that a new dri­ver’s per­mit will be is­sued and by the end of the year, the re­new­al of per­mits will be arranged on­line.

“We are find­ing a num­ber of fraud­u­lent per­mits. It is high in quan­ti­ty and that is why the min­istry is seek­ing to have a re­vamped and new dri­ver’s per­mit out to the pub­lic very soon. Most like­ly it will be out be­fore De­cem­ber. It will be in cir­cu­la­tion by Oc­to­ber,” he added.

He sound­ed a warn­ing to those who have been en­gag­ing in fraud­u­lent is­su­ing of dri­vers’ per­mits.

“We have de­vices with us where we will check those per­mits im­me­di­ate­ly and know if they are coun­ter­feit. It is part of the op­er­a­tion to­day. We have ve­hi­cles where we have found tam­pered chas­sis. Those ve­hi­cles are ei­ther knock­down or stolen ve­hi­cles,” Clarke said.

Transport Commissioner Clive Clarke, left, Motor Vehicle Supervisor Marlon Mohammed and Act Supt (South) Ian Carthy, look at some documents during TTPS and the Licensing joint exercise along the Solomon Hochoy Highway Extension, Golconda yesterday.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Con­cern­ing the elec­tron­ic li­cense plates, Clive said the Min­istry of Trans­port is still en­gaged in the pro­cure­ment phase and will is­sue a state­ment on that in due course.

Clarke al­so said dri­vers per­mits are valid un­til Oc­to­ber 1 and not De­cem­ber.

“The tints are valid un­til De­cem­ber. We un­der­stand that some peo­ple have not re­ceived an ap­point­ment for re­new­al. We are op­er­at­ing with the ap­point­ment sys­tem be­cause we have to man­age the crowd. We are in­creas­ing ap­point­ments day by day so don’t wor­ry if you have an ex­pired per­mit. The Com­mis­sion­er’s per­mit is ex­pired. It is valid un­til Oc­to­ber 1 so you can­not be is­sued a tick­et,” he added.

Clarke al­so said the cur­rent method of per­mit re­new­al is not ide­al so they were aim­ing at an on­line re­new­al sys­tem by year-end.

Mean­while, ASP Ian Carthy from the South­ern Di­vi­sion said Op­er­a­tion Im­pact will con­tin­ue over the next few weeks.

“As­pects of this ini­tia­tive will fo­cus on gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty and vi­o­lent crime. There is an­oth­er facet of the ini­tia­tive which is com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ments. We have start­ed walk­a­bouts in the var­i­ous dis­tricts and the feed­back is over­whelm­ing. We know there are at-risk com­mu­ni­ties but we are not leav­ing out the mid­dle and up­per-class ar­eas. We will roll out an ini­tia­tive in these ar­eas to pro­vide more pa­trols.

TTPS and Licensing officers held a joint exercise along the Solomon Hochoy Highway Extension, Golconda, yesterday.

KRISTIAN DE SILVA

Among those ar­rest­ed yes­ter­day were four men who were charged with nar­cotics pos­ses­sion, dri­ving with­out valid in­sur­ance, de­fec­tive tyres, and dys­func­tion­al wipers. The vi­o­la­tors were giv­en print­ed tick­ets on the spot which were logged im­me­di­ate­ly on the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion’s data­base.