KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Less than 24 hours af­ter mo­torists were shocked to learn of new late penal­ties for dri­ver’s per­mit re­newals, of­fi­cials now ad­mit Mon­day’s fig­ures were a mis­take, and the ac­tu­al fees are even high­er.

Ac­cord­ing to Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke, per­mits that ex­pired for six months or less now car­ry a late fee of $650, up from the $600 that was charged on Mon­day.

Per­mits that ex­pired for more than six months and up to three years car­ry a late penal­ty of $1,750 in­stead of $1,000.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone yes­ter­day, Clarke ad­mit­ted the er­ror was an ad­min­is­tra­tive one which was on­ly picked up on Mon­day evening.

Clarke said, “The er­ror was picked up in the af­ter­noon, which was af­ter four when Li­cens­ing would have fin­ished cashed at the end of the day, so we did not want to en­ter in­to the fol­low­ing day with that. So, im­me­di­ate­ly, con­sul­ta­tions were made with the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, the min­is­ter, etc, for us to take nec­es­sary steps to amend it, to make sure we con­form with the law”.

Clarke ad­mit­ted the grave er­ror meant that hun­dreds of mo­torists who paid late fees on Mon­day were un­der­charged.

He said, “I don’t like to use the term get away. Let me use the term that they were prob­a­bly for­tu­nate by (that) ad­min­is­tra­tive er­ror. What is more im­por­tant is that the min­istry has tak­en the steps to fix that er­ror and there­fore to ap­ply what is a le­gal fig­ure based on that.”

He ex­plained that the mem­o­ran­dum, which was cir­cu­lat­ed to the pub­lic on Mon­day, re­flect­ing fees that mo­torists were ini­tial­ly charged, was on­ly meant to be shown as an ex­am­ple to work­ers, not the ac­tu­al penal­ties.

“What hap­pened there is that an in­ter­nal memo, not a memo to the pub­lic. An in­ter­nal memo went out to the mem­bers of staff with the in­ten­tion of ad­vis­ing them how the charges are to be ap­plied in the con­text of the time. In do­ing so, in­ad­ver­tent­ly, the first part of the amount was copied, so you find the $1,000, the $600, as op­posed to the $650 and the $1,750. We have tak­en the steps to ad­just that in­ter­nal­ly by in­form­ing staff. We have ad­just­ed that im­me­di­ate­ly on the com­put­er sys­tem. So what would have hap­pened where those changes were made, and the cor­rect­ed fig­ures were ap­plied with the ef­fect from the date.”

He al­so apol­o­gised to both staff and the pub­lic for the er­ror.

He said, “We do apol­o­gise on that fac­tor. But in spite of that, we must com­ply with what the le­gal re­quire­ment is.”

He is now im­plor­ing the pub­lic to com­ply with the new fees, which he said were gazetted since last month.

“I just want to point out, though, that the fig­ures of 2025, that’s the Fi­nance Bill, that in it­self would have iden­ti­fied what the true fig­ures are, which is in the pub­lic do­main and has been gazetted.”

He al­so promised that the pub­lic will be prop­er­ly in­formed of all ad­just­ed fees by to­day, Wednes­day, as there are more fee ad­just­ments that mo­torists may not be aware of.

When con­tact­ed, Trans­port Min­is­ter Za­k­our Ali al­so re­it­er­at­ed that the fees had been an­nounced since De­cem­ber.