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.