SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Weeks af­ter Guardian Me­dia pub­lished the sto­ry of a Valeni­ca man who said his car was seized af­ter an­oth­er ve­hi­cle with the same reg­is­tra­tion was dis­cov­ered, the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er says that prob­lem is far more wide­spread.

In fact, Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke says there are hun­dreds of ve­hi­cles on the na­tion’s roads with du­pli­cate reg­is­tra­tions.

Clarke made the star­tling rev­e­la­tion dur­ing an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion’s Ca­roni Head­quar­ters on Thurs­day. Two of Clarke’s right-hand of­fi­cers in the fight against cor­rup­tion at the di­vi­sion, Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle In­spec­tor I, Nir­van Sinanan and Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Su­per­vi­sor I, Cha­ka Mc Far­lane, were al­so present dur­ing the in­ter­view.

“Ac­cord­ing to our records we have over 300 du­pli­cate ve­hi­cles in our sys­tem right now,” Clarke said.

He said he has tasked Mc Far­lane with in­ves­ti­gat­ing in­stances where there are du­pli­cate reg­is­tra­tions of ve­hi­cles.

Mc Far­lane ex­plained that the di­vi­sion’s pre­vi­ous man­u­al log­books con­tributed great­ly to the du­pli­cates be­ing dis­cov­ered now.

“In the past sys­tem that we had the man­u­al sys­tem where num­bers were is­sued to the three di­vi­sion­al of­fices- San Fer­nan­do, Port of Spain and To­ba­go- the li­cens­ing au­thor­i­ty would have been is­su­ing num­bers in batch­es to the var­i­ous sites. The is­sue with that is in terms of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, a ve­hi­cle would have been reg­is­tered in To­ba­go as PBM 1 and a week lat­er, an­oth­er ve­hi­cle would have been reg­is­tered in San Fer­nan­do with the same reg­is­tra­tion,” Mc Far­lane said.

He said the same num­bers were is­sued to dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions of the di­vi­sion and with no com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween branch­es, the mis­takes were not picked up for years.

Clarke said it was on­ly when ve­hi­cle own­ers went in­to the li­cens­ing of­fice to get new cer­ti­fied copies, that the er­ror would be iden­ti­fied.

Mc Far­lane said there were al­so in­stances where ve­hi­cles were fraud­u­lent­ly reg­is­tered.

“We have du­pli­cates that are not le­git­i­mate, and this is where the re­search gets more in depth be­cause there are ve­hi­cles that are not sup­posed to be reg­is­tered like knock­down ve­hi­cles, we have ve­hi­cles that are stolen ve­hi­cles that car­ry the same num­ber plate, some­times we may have ve­hi­cles that car­ry the same chas­sis,” Mc Far­lane said.

He said if a du­pli­cate reg­is­tra­tion is dis­cov­ered, he will in­ves­ti­gate to de­ter­mine whether it was done il­le­gal­ly or by mis­take from the di­vi­sion. If it was an er­ror by the di­vi­sion, the ve­hi­cle will be as­signed an avail­able num­ber from the se­ries in which it was orig­i­nal­ly reg­is­tered.

Clarke said a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to the du­pli­ca­tions was the ‘spe­cial reg­is­tra­tion’ re­quests. He said when spe­cial num­bers were re­quest­ed and as­signed at the dif­fer­ent li­cens­ing of­fices, it was done man­u­al­ly, with no way for em­ploy­ees to check if the num­bers were avail­able.

He said now, a com­put­er pro­gramme gen­er­ates ve­hi­cle reg­is­tra­tion num­bers, mak­ing it im­pos­si­ble for du­pli­cates to arise.

But Clarke said ve­hi­cle reg­is­tra­tions were not the on­ly du­pli­cates com­ing out of the di­vi­sion, as he said the dri­vers per­mit sys­tem was plagued with the same is­sue.

Be­cause of this, he is con­sid­er­ing a com­plete over­haul of the dri­ver's per­mit sys­tem.

“We will need to look at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of is­su­ing a new dri­ver's per­mit, new de­sign, new style, new se­cu­ri­ty and ba­si­cal­ly do what we call a call-in, you give a dead­line and you change every sin­gle per­mit in Trinidad and To­ba­go, about 700,000 to sani­tise our records,” Clarke said.

When asked about the ru­mours that dri­ver's per­mits could be bought at the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion, Clarke did not de­ny this.

“You are see­ing ev­i­dence of doc­u­men­ta­tion for per­mits where peo­ple con­fessed they paid for it and that is mak­ing it more fright­en­ing, for that to hap­pen, there must be an aid­ing and abet­ting in­ter­nal­ly, I am not hes­i­tat­ing to say that,” Clarke said.

He said by June 2021, re­newals will move to on­line, cut­ting out the need for cit­i­zens to vis­it the di­vi­sion’s of­fices.

He said the di­vi­sion is al­so bring­ing mo­bile units in­to op­er­a­tion next year, to vis­it com­mu­ni­ties and fa­cil­i­tate re­newals, new ap­pli­ca­tions and dri­ving tests.