Tau­reef Mo­hammed

The Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Au­thor­i­ty (MVA) will not be ful­ly op­er­a­tional in Sep­tem­ber, but in­stead is ex­pect­ed to be in­tro­duced in phas­es, says Trans­port Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz.In Feb­ru­ary, Cadiz re­port­ed­ly said the MVA would be ful­ly op­er­a­tional by Sep­tem­ber, fol­low­ing the com­ple­tion of the au­thor­i­ty's head of­fice at Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment, Ca­roni in June.In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, he said the head of­fice was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in Ju­ly and the ad­min­is­tra­tive work of the au­thor­i­ty would com­mence in Sep­tem­ber.

How­ev­er, with re­gard to the trans­for­ma­tion of the li­cens­ing sys­tem to a ful­ly com­put­erised sys­tem, Cadiz could not give a def­i­nite time frame."The whole process will take some time and we con­tin­ue to work to get oth­er things in or­der. The in­fra­struc­tur­al work which would in­clude the head of­fice at Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment is on tar­get to be com­plet­ed by Sep­tem­ber."He said leg­isla­tive and hu­man re­source is­sues were out­stand­ing.

"The min­istry has signed off on the fi­nal draft, so the next step is to take it to Cab­i­net, then to Par­lia­ment.""The com­ple­ment of staff is in the vicin­i­ty of 700 and be­cause we are chang­ing over to a ful­ly com­put­erised li­cens­ing sys­tem, the main ser­vices re­quired would be in the area of In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy (IT)."

In a let­ter to the T&T Guardian last year con­cern­ing the MVA, for­mer Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Works Colm Im­bert said: "The first phase of the new dri­vers per­mits and ve­hi­cle in­spec­tion sys­tem, com­pris­ing in­spec­tion and li­cens­ing of new ve­hi­cles and a ful­ly com­put­erised data­base, us­ing the tech­nol­o­gy, proven sys­tems and ex­pe­ri­ence of the Province of No­va Sco­tia was in fact due for com­mence­ment in the sec­ond half of 2010, af­ter the elec­tion. The full im­ple­men­ta­tion of the project was sched­uled for 2011."

Asked to re­spond to those in the Op­po­si­tion who said the project should have been com­plet­ed by 2011, Cadiz said, "I'm not too sure if the orig­i­nal framers un­der­stood ful­ly what a project like this en­tailed. There are oth­er coun­tries that have tak­en even longer to im­ple­ment a project like this."

Road works in Ca­roni

Ma­jor road works have been on­go­ing in and around Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment to ac­com­mo­date the in­crease in traf­fic that is ex­pect­ed with the open­ing of the MVA's head of­fice in Sep­tem­ber.Project Man­ag­er Hay­den Philip said the work would be done in two phas­es:

�2 Phase 1: The con­struc­tion of a dual car­riage­way which would link round­abouts at Wash­ing­ton Junc­tion and Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment. This phase is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed in Sep­tem­ber.

�2 Phase 2: The ex­pan­sion of the cur­rent main South­ern Main Road be­tween TYE and the round­about at the Ca­roni Bridge to a dual car­riage­way.

Res­i­dents in the area said they were look­ing for­ward to the de­vel­op­ments in the area. Stephen Kan­gal, for­mer Deputy High Com­mis­sion­er to Cana­da who lives in Ca­roni Vil­lage, said the build­ing of the MVA and ma­jor road­ways through Ca­roni Vil­lage, Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment, and La Paille Vil­lage would re­vive the area, which was once a hub of ac­tiv­i­ties."Through these de­vel­op­ments, they're bring­ing back the im­pact the area once had in the 1930s with the sug­ar fac­to­ry and in the 1960s as a rail­way town."

"We are look­ing for­ward to the ben­e­fits that would come with the open­ing of the li­cens­ing of­fice here and the new road­ways: Eas­i­er ac­cess to the air­port for peo­ple from South, the in­crease in val­ue of land, less traf­fic, and more em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties."An­oth­er res­i­dent said: "We are thank­ful for the bal­anced ap­proach that the Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing with re­gard to de­vel­op­ment. The area has been ne­glect­ed and mar­gin­alised for years, so we are very hap­py that some­thing is be­ing done.

Gu­rudutt Haresh Ma­haraj, one of the pun­dits in the area, said he was hap­py for the new road­ways in the area but was con­cerned that the land used by the lo­cal mosque and tem­ple for park­ing was be­ing con­vert­ed to a road­way."While they are do­ing their work, if they can fix and cor­don off an area for the mosque, tem­ple, and church to use for park­ing we will be very hap­py be­cause as it is now the on­ly space that we could have used for park­ing is no longer there."