Shas­tri Boodan

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke has warned mem­bers of the pub­lic con­duct­ing trans­ac­tions at the Ca­roni Li­cens­ing Of­fice to be cau­tious of fraud­sters and con­men op­er­at­ing out­side the fa­cil­i­ty and even on so­cial me­dia.

Clarke yes­ter­day al­so urged the pub­lic to meet with him in con­fi­dence if they be­lieve they have been vic­tims of fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ty.

“De­spite what you do, there are peo­ple who have built a sec­ondary in­come over a pe­ri­od of time. It is im­pos­si­ble for them to do right, sys­tems have to be put in place to stop that,” Clarke said.

Cit­ing ex­am­ples, Clarke said in­di­vid­u­als are mis­lead­ing un­sus­pect­ing peo­ple by sug­gest­ing they are con­nect­ed to the op­er­a­tions of the State-run fa­cil­i­ty.

He ex­plained that sev­er­al fraud­sters are claim­ing to have links that can se­cure ap­provals for tint ex­emp­tions, with some even post­ing pho­tographs of them­selves leav­ing the Li­cens­ing Of­fice hold­ing ap­provals.

“There are a lot of per­sons with fraud­u­lent tint (ap­provals) and they want to present it to po­lice and li­cense of­fi­cers when they catch you. They telling per­sons they get­ting it from li­cens­ing, when in truth and in fact, that can­not come from li­cens­ing. I’ll tell you, every sin­gle tint (ap­proval), is is­sued from the Com­mis­sion­er.”

Clarke said there is an elec­tron­ic record of all tint ex­emp­tion ap­provals that can eas­i­ly be ac­cessed on hand­held de­vices used by po­lice and li­cens­ing of­fi­cers.

He urged mo­torists to fol­low the prop­er pro­ce­dure and ap­ply through au­tho­rised chan­nels.

He fur­ther re­vealed that some in­di­vid­u­als wear badges to give the im­pres­sion they work at the Li­cens­ing Of­fice, when, in fact, they are touts, or peo­ple sell­ing forms which are ac­tu­al­ly free in­side the fa­cil­i­ty or avail­able on­line.

Oth­ers claim to have con­nec­tions to ex­pe­dite trans­ac­tions.

Clarke said he has al­so re­ceived re­ports of per­sons sell­ing forms pre-signed by a doc­tor and a jus­tice of the peace (JP), which he de­scribed as fraud­u­lent, since ap­pli­cants must be present be­fore a doc­tor for an ex­am­i­na­tion and must swear in per­son be­fore a JP.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about per­cep­tions of favouritism at the fa­cil­i­ty, Clarke ex­plained that peo­ple are on the com­pound for a va­ri­ety of le­git­i­mate trans­ac­tions.

He not­ed that in­spec­tion bays car­ry out mul­ti­ple ser­vices, in­clud­ing in­spec­tions, reg­is­tra­tion of for­eign-used and new ve­hi­cles, road­wor­thi­ness checks and trans­fers.

He added that there are no longer ap­point­ments for in­spec­tions of ve­hi­cles with a max­i­mum gross weight (MGW) of less than 600kg, mean­ing small­er ve­hi­cles can now be in­spect­ed with­out book­ing. He said the ap­point­ment sys­tem was dis­con­tin­ued be­cause many mo­torists failed to turn up, leav­ing time slots un­used. “There is no penal­ty for that,” he said.

He said re­lief is on the way as some ser­vices will soon be de­cen­tralised. An­nu­al in­spec­tions for taxis and small maxi-taxis will short­ly be con­duct­ed at the coun­try’s 80-plus in­spec­tion bays. Own­ers of “T” ve­hi­cles with a MGW of 3,200 tonnes will be able to car­ry out their an­nu­al in­spec­tion at VM­COTT sites.

Clarke fur­ther not­ed that ve­hi­cle trans­fers have been de­cen­tralised to of­fices at Guaico, Point Fortin and Ari­ma. He said dri­ver’s per­mit re­newals for Class One and Class Three can al­ready be done on­line, and they are work­ing to ex­pand on­line re­newals to oth­er class­es.