JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Saturday, July 26, 2025

Licensing inspection racket unearthed

Stickers 'selling' at $1,500

by

Khamal Georges
2393 days ago
20190105
Acting Transport Commissioner Michael Looby inspects a vehicle at Licensing Office on Shirvan Road, Tobago on December 31.

Acting Transport Commissioner Michael Looby inspects a vehicle at Licensing Office on Shirvan Road, Tobago on December 31.

VINDRA GOPAUL-BOODANN

An on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to mo­tor ve­hi­cle in­spec­tions at the Port-of-Spain Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion has un­earthed a rack­et in­volv­ing se­nior li­cens­ing of­fi­cers, over­priced in­spec­tion stick­ers, and com­plic­it pri­vate garages.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­vealed col­lu­sion be­tween some se­nior li­cens­ing of­fi­cers and op­er­a­tors of in­spec­tion sta­tions. Ac­cord­ing to in­sid­ers at the Min­istry of Trans­port, it be­came ev­i­dent that se­nior of­fi­cers sought to cre­ate pan­ic so that the de­mand for stick­ers would in­crease sig­nif­i­cant­ly and this drove the price up. Li­cens­ing of­fi­cers, Guardian Me­dia learned, were of­fer­ing them for sale at $1,500. The per­son will­ing to pay that amount would by­pass the long wait time and have the stick­ers con­ve­nient­ly de­liv­ered to their homes and work­places.

Guardian Me­dia al­so un­der­stands that a Min­istry of Works and Trans­port of­fi­cial vis­it­ed the Port-of-Spain Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion of­fice and seized the in­spec­tion reg­is­ters af­ter get­ting wind of the cor­rupt prac­tice.

It was in there they got ad­di­tion­al ev­i­dence of the un­eth­i­cal be­hav­iour. It showed more than 300 in­spec­tion stick­ers be­ing dis­trib­uted in a sin­gle day. But, that par­tic­u­lar of­fice can on­ly in­spect be­tween 50-70 ve­hi­cles dai­ly.

When the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port got wind of the scheme, it at­tempt­ed to pre­vent the in­for­ma­tion from be­ing put in­to the pub­lic do­main, but it was too late. The news spread rapid­ly on so­cial me­dia and peo­ple will­ing­ly paid three times the ac­tu­al cost to have their ve­hi­cles in­spect­ed.

Guardian Me­dia was told that the Trans­port Min­istry rec­om­mend­ed a five-month mora­to­ri­um to put a spoke in the wheel of those cash­ing in on the rush and to pro­tect cit­i­zens from ex­ploita­tion.

Sinanan con­firmed that he was aware of the il­le­gal op­er­a­tions and planned to shut it down as soon as pos­si­ble.

He said it was clear that the num­ber of in­spec­tions be­ing done was sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than the num­ber of stick­ers be­ing dis­trib­uted. The mat­ter is still be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

He said the mora­to­ri­um was giv­en to en­sure cit­i­zens were "not tak­en ad­van­tage of". Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Sinanan said, peo­ple are will­ing to pay that mon­ey and he is urg­ing them against it.

He is al­so warn­ing pri­vate garages that their li­cences will be re­voked if caught in the act.

One garage own­er, Richie Sookhai of Sookhai's Diesel yes­ter­day con­firmed that peo­ple were of­fer­ing to pay ex­tra for the con­ve­nience.

"But that is not some­thing we would even en­ter­tain here," he said.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Sookhai said that peo­ple slept in their cars out­side his in­spec­tion bay from 2 am.

"It was slow in the past five months, ten cars or so for the day and then the day af­ter Box­ing day...mad­ness," he said.

Sookhai ex­tend­ed busi­ness hours to keep up with the de­mand but was still turn­ing peo­ple away and telling them to come back an­oth­er day for in­spec­tion.

Back in Ju­ly, dri­vers faced much of the same sit­u­a­tion. Sinanan said then that there were 137,000 T-ve­hi­cles in the coun­try and on­ly the li­cens­ing of­fices in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do were equipped to in­spect those heavy ve­hi­cles. Even then, Sinanan said it was im­pos­si­ble for the two bays to have all those ve­hi­cles in­spect­ed in a time­ly man­ner. The Gov­ern­ment then al­lowed pri­vate garages to in­spect the heavy ve­hi­cles.

He hint­ed at the cor­rup­tion even then, say­ing that there was a lot of al­le­ga­tions about ve­hi­cles hav­ing in­spec­tion stick­ers with­out be­ing present for in­spec­tion.

The Port-of-Spain of­fice in­tro­duced a "ran­domi­sa­tion of li­cenc­ing ve­hi­cles". Sinanan ex­plained then that the li­cens­ing of­fice pre­vi­ous­ly went to a se­quence where the com­put­er gen­er­at­ed num­bers from two to 999 but there were al­le­ga­tions then that peo­ple were pay­ing for spe­cial favours to jump the queue.

The new sys­tem al­lowed the num­ber to be com­put­er gen­er­at­ed. He was con­fi­dent then that no one could ma­nip­u­late the sys­tem.

But it seems that se­nior of­fi­cials found a way around that, which prompt­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the num­ber of ve­hi­cles ac­tu­al­ly in­spect­ed com­pared to the num­ber of stick­ers hand­ed out.


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored