KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Some 14,281 mo­torists have ex­ceed­ed the de­mer­it points on their dri­ver’s per­mits and should not be al­lowed back on the na­tion’s roads for a pe­ri­od of time. How­ev­er, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) keeps run­ning in­to road­blocks when it comes to no­ti­fy­ing the cul­prits.

The in­for­ma­tion was dis­closed by the min­istry’s Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary So­nia Fran­cis-Year­wood dur­ing a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) to ex­am­ine the de­mer­it point sys­tem yes­ter­day.

Giv­ing a break­down of in­frac­tions, she said there were 55,570 fixed penal­ty no­tices is­sued in 2020, 91,403 in 2021, 95,566 in 2022 and 107,440 in 2023. There have been 103,329 fixed penal­ty no­tices is­sued so far for 2024.

Fran­cis-Year­wood ad­mit­ted the cur­rent sys­tem is prov­ing to be a chal­lenge as no­tices are served to mo­torists via TTPOST but this has on­ly had a 25 per cent re­sponse rate.

The JSC deemed this “a de­vel­op­ing prob­lem.”

As such, Fran­cis-Year­wood said the min­istry is al­so look­ing at al­ter­na­tive ways to serve no­tices to mo­torists.

“We are hav­ing some chal­lenges with the process. Part of the process is that you are serv­ing the per­son and the process we use thus far is TTPost and de­liv­ery is prov­ing to be chal­leng­ing. Even though the law states that if you change your ad­dress, you need to go in­to the li­cens­ing of­fice, but that is not some­thing that is hap­pen­ing and be­cause of that, de­liv­er­ies are prov­ing to be chal­leng­ing,” Fran­cis-Year­wood said.

“There are some oth­er ar­eas why de­liv­ery is prov­ing to be chal­leng­ing. So one of the oth­er amend­ments that we’re look­ing at, and we have made this pro­pos­al al­ready, is to be able to change the man­ner to pub­li­ca­tion, where­by we would pub­lish in the dai­ly news­pa­pers. That will be the method of no­tice. But that is the pro­pos­al at this point.”

The min­istry al­so en­cour­aged the pub­lic to up­date their mail­ing ad­dress­es.

Mean­while, mo­torists may soon be able to pay their fixed penal­ty fines on­line as the min­istry says it’s work­ing on im­ple­ment­ing a dig­i­tal plat­form. At present, the pub­lic can on­ly pay their fines at TTPost of­fices.

Fran­cis-Year­wood said, “The de­sire of the min­istry is to even­tu­al­ly have as many pay­ment out­lets. We have been speak­ing with TTPost in terms of try­ing to ex­pand to some of their agen­cies and al­so to go on­line. The on­line as­pect for not just this ac­tiv­i­ty but for a num­ber of ac­tiv­i­ties with­in the Trans­port Di­vi­sion.”

She said al­so on the min­istry’s agen­da is crack­ing down on fake li­cence plates. The min­istry has sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al to Cab­i­net for on­ly ap­proved sup­pli­ers to pro­duce plates with tech­nol­o­gy to al­low for im­me­di­ate iden­ti­fi­ca­tion.

This is be­ing ful­ly sup­port­ed by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS).

Al­so speak­ing be­fore the JSC, TTPS Road Safe­ty Co­or­di­na­tor Brent Bat­son said the use of fake plates by crim­i­nals af­fects their in­ves­ti­ga­tions.

Bat­son said, “We’ve had vis­its from mul­ti­ple po­lice agen­cies across the world like the Lon­don Met, NYPD, and they are in shock and hor­ror when they see peo­ple able to buy a plate at the side of the road. The pub­lic al­ways say, ‘How come they’re able to get away if we got the num­ber plates?’ But, the abil­i­ty to slap on false plates in this coun­try is ridicu­lous­ly easy and it’s one of the ma­jor ar­eas that takes us, some­times in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, to lead to where the true per­pe­tra­tors are. Rent­ing out cars, swap­ping out plates, as it goes, so the ease at which it is done is some­thing that we’re look­ing for­ward to.”