Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

A mod­ernised li­cens­ing au­thor­i­ty was first in­tro­duced by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in 2008 at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of $45 mil­lion but it lat­er moved to $230 mil­lion un­der the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

How­ev­er, af­ter that an­nounce­ment was made al­most eight years ago by the PNM gov­ern­ment, the "build­ing" is ex­pect­ed to be oc­cu­pied and the op­er­a­tions start­ed in a few weeks.

In fact, yes­ter­day, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan told the Sun­day Guardian there will be some ac­tiv­i­ties at the Ca­roni fa­cil­i­ty by Feb­ru­ary. He said the "build­ing" will be op­er­a­tional al­though there was no Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Au­thor­i­ty (MVA) Act.

Asked about the act, he said, "The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is tweak­ing the act. There are some changes they have to make to get it right. Mean­while, we will be pro­claim­ing some as­pects of the act.

"What we are about to do is move the head of­fice to the MVA build­ing. That will be hap­pen by the mid­dle of Feb­ru­ary. There will be some ac­tiv­i­ties tak­ing place.

"It will just take time to have every­thing moved in and then we will start with the li­cens­ing of ve­hi­cles and in­spect­ing ve­hi­cles by the end of Feb­ru­ary."

Colm Im­bert, who was then the min­is­ter of works and trans­port told the me­dia at a post-Cab­i­net news brief­ing that it would have been called the Dri­ver's Per­mit and Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty but it was in­stead called the MVA when the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship as­sumed of­fice from 2010 to 2015.

Project went from PNM to PP to PNM

The PNM's pro­posed site was in St Joseph, east of the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex.

Ac­cord­ing to the 2011 Bud­get state­ment, "Trans­form­ing the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty is a top pri­or­i­ty. We will es­tab­lish a Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Au­thor­i­ty us­ing the knowl­edge, ex­pe­ri­ence and best prac­tices of Cana­da to com­plete­ly trans­form the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion by adapt­ing Cana­da's Busi­ness Process­es, Ser­vice De­liv­ery method, lay­out of Fa­cil­i­ties, Sys­tems Soft­ware and Leg­is­la­tion to meet the needs of cit­i­zens."

The PP's pro­pos­al for the MVA was that it be es­tab­lished at the South­ern Main Road, Fred­er­ick Set­tle­ment, Ca­roni.

State-owned com­pa­ny, the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Nid­co) was re­spon­si­ble for the man­age­ment of the trans­for­ma­tion project.

Its cor­po­rate strate­gic plan for 2011-2015 stat­ed the mod­ernised MVA was in­tend­ed to im­prove the way the Gov­ern­ment de­liv­ers ser­vices to its cit­i­zens by util­is­ing state-of-the- art tech­nol­o­gy and by pro­vid­ing sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments to ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and ser­vice de­liv­ery stan­dards to its cit­i­zens.

It stat­ed, "To en­able ef­fec­tive de­liv­ery of MVA ser­vices to cus­tomers, MVA Cen­tres are to be es­tab­lished at sev­er­al lo­ca­tions through­out the coun­try. Con­struc­tion of the MVA Cen­tres will be un­der tak­en us­ing the De­sign- Build mod­el, with works to be­gin in 2011/2012 fi­nan­cial year." Item sev­en on Nid­co's pro­gramme pro­jec­tions for 2011-2015 list­ed the es­ti­mat­ed cost for the es­tab­lish­ment of the Dri­ver's and Ve­hi­cle Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty as $618,703,00, that al­so en­tailed cost for the con­struc­tion of ten cen­tres through­out the coun­try.

In Au­gust 2015, when she was prime min­is­ter, Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar said then Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley was not telling the truth when he said the MVA build­ing in Ca­roni cost the Gov­ern­ment over $1 bil­lion. She said it was around $230 mil­lion.

Cadiz: 'I am hap­py'

For­mer trans­port min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz said he was hap­py that the build­ing will soon be­come op­er­a­tional.

He said, "It is go­ing to change the way in which busi­ness is done in Trinidad as far as ve­hi­cles are con­cerned. It is go­ing to as­sist the po­lice great­ly in the is­sue of mo­tor car steal­ing and all of that."

How­ev­er, he said for the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty to work prop­er­ly, the act was need­ed.

"Just mov­ing Wright­son Road in­to Ca­roni is not go­ing to do it. It is not go­ing to change any­thing. The re­al change will come with the act."

Asked about the cost, he said the build­ing came with­in the bud­get­ed price and there were no cost over­runs. He said it would have been around $230 mil­lion.

Cadiz said, "The pub­lic will be hap­py to fi­nal­ly have a place that works."