Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal@guardian.co.tt

Be­tween Jan­u­ary 1, 2021, and May 11, 2023–a pe­ri­od of 860 days–62 fixed penal­ty no­tices/fines were is­sued by the Trans­port Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT) for ‘goods ve­hi­cles car­ry­ing ex­cess weight.’

That works out, on av­er­age, to a tick­et be­ing is­sued every two weeks for over­loaded ve­hi­cles, or two tick­ets be­ing is­sued every month.

The in­for­ma­tion was ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia hrough a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion Act Re­quest (FOIA) made to the MOWT in Jan­u­ary 2023. The re­quest was grant­ed four months lat­er in May.

The da­ta, said Trans­porta­tion En­gi­neer Dr Trevor Townsend, has to be viewed from the lens of com­pli­ance or en­force­ment.

“Ei­ther we have very com­pli­ant truck dri­vers or en­force­ment is woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate. Both the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) and the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle Of­fi­cers of the Trans­port Di­vi­sion, MOWT have the pow­er to en­force the law re: over­weight ve­hi­cles,” said Townsend.

An­oth­er en­gi­neer, (who asked for anonymi­ty) with an un­der­stand­ing of the min­istry’s op­er­a­tions, said prop­er en­force­ment was lack­ing be­cause of a short­age of prop­er equip­ment, an in­abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly cal­i­brate equip­ment, as well as a lack of trained per­son­nel to op­er­ate the equip­ment.

“It’s eas­i­er said than done. Yes, it’s a nice talk (about en­force­ment) but in­side the min­istry, they don’t un­der­stand the mech­a­nisms of how to do some­thing like this ef­fec­tive­ly. I’m not sure they are very clear on it. And un­til such time, it’s noth­ing but a lot of hot air.”

The en­gi­neer said the scales used by the min­istry to weigh the ve­hi­cles are very ex­pen­sive to main­tain. But the source added, “There is a low rate of main­te­nance. The scales they have at the Ca­roni sta­tion and the oth­er sta­tions go out of com­pli­ance very quick­ly. They are not in com­pli­ance.”

In­fra­struc­ture dam­age

Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert have stat­ed that over­weight ve­hi­cles are a sig­nif­i­cant cause of .

Ac­cord­ing to the FOIA doc­u­ment re­ceived by Guardian Me­dia, the Gov­ern­ment spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $253.1 mil­lion on 232 Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion projects be­tween Jan­u­ary 1, 2021 and May 11, 2023.

These projects in­clude cul­vert re­con­struc­tion, con­crete, drainage, strength­en­ing, paving, tem­po­rary di­ver­sions and emer­gency works.

In jus­ti­fy­ing an in­crease in fines for il­le­gal­ly over­weight trucks from $750 to $8,000 in his 2022 bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Im­bert said that in­fra­struc­ture dam­age sus­tained by over­weight trucks con­tin­ues to be a ma­jor con­cern.

“One le­gal truck caus­es the same amount of dam­age to a road as ap­prox­i­mate­ly 9,600 cars. How­ev­er, one truck over­loaded by over 20 per cent could cause the same amount of dam­age as 19,000 cars. A truck over­loaded by 100 per cent could cause the same dam­age as 18 le­gal trucks,” Im­bert had said.

In an at­tempt to deal with the is­sue, Im­bert had said the MOWT launched weight con­trol sta­tions at Ca­roni and Gol­con­da.

“Weigh­ing at these lo­ca­tions over the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 2018 to March 2019, in­di­cat­ed that of the 126 trucks weighed, 94 per cent of the ve­hi­cles weighed were over­weight, six per cent of which were over­weight by more than 100 per cent,” Im­bert added.

In Jan­u­ary 2023, not for the first time, Sinanan said that ‘a crack­down’ on the is­sue by the TTPS and li­cens­ing of­fi­cers start­ed more than a year pri­or.

“I know of one ex­er­cise that the of­fi­cers went on where they pulled aside 97 trucks and of those 92 were over­loaded. These ex­er­cis­es are on­go­ing.

“There are four scales op­er­at­ing right now that are cal­i­brat­ed through the Bu­reau of Stan­dards. We do have pe­ri­od­ic checks on the roads by the li­cense of­fi­cers and that will be en­hanced as we go for­ward. We must reg­u­larise the weight trucks are li­censed for, the routes they are li­censed for, and how we can move for­ward to pro­tect the in­vest­ment in our in­fra­struc­ture,” Sinanan said.

He said two more weigh­ing scales were ex­pect­ed to be added to the sys­tem.

In March 2022, Sinanan, at the launch of the Min­istry’s Elec­tron­ic Ve­hi­cle In­spec­tion Sys­tem in Ch­agua­nas, said that the new elec­tron­ic scan­ning tech­nol­o­gy would aid in de­tect­ing over­weight ve­hi­cles.

“With the new ve­hi­cle in­spec­tion tech­nol­o­gy and hand­held de­vices that of­fi­cers have, we can iden­ti­fy these trucks. Once a truck is iden­ti­fied on a route it was not li­cenced for, then penal­ties can be ad­min­is­tered on the truck … be­cause those ve­hi­cles are in part to be blamed for the dam­aged roads.

“So what would hap­pen in a case like that is that road would be dam­aged, and some­times the same con­trac­tors you have to pay to re­pair the roads are the ones re­spon­si­ble for dam­ag­ing the roads in the first place … So we are go­ing to be crack­ing down on these over­weight ve­hi­cles and ve­hi­cles that are us­ing routes that they are not li­cenced for,” Sinanan had said.

Sinanan could not be reached for com­ment on the ef­fec­tive­ness of en­force­ment or the state of com­pli­ance as he is away on gov­ern­ment busi­ness in Chi­na.

Ju­nior Works Min­is­ter Ritchie Sookhai de­ferred to Sinanan for com­ment on the mat­ter.

Ad­dress is­sue for pub­lic good—JCC pres­i­dent

Mean­while, the Pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try Fazir Khan said the is­sue was a valid one to ad­dress “for the pub­lic good.”

Khan, a civ­il en­gi­neer, said the im­pact of over­weight ve­hi­cles on the na­tion’s roads was very high and cost­ly for the Gov­ern­ment to main­tain.

“Roads are de­signed for spec­i­fied axle loads per in­ter­na­tion­al codes. When truck­ers add strips to their trays to in­crease vol­ume they in­vari­ably in­crease the axle shell loads on the pub­lic roads. Sec­ondary roads are es­pe­cial­ly prone to dam­age and this is ev­i­dent through­out the coun­try.

“Last year, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port pur­chased equip­ment to elec­tron­i­cal­ly mon­i­tor trucks via the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty. We do not have re­ports on how ef­fec­tive this has been in terms of im­ple­men­ta­tion. One area to check would be the au­thor­i­ties them­selves that car­ry out an­nu­al in­spec­tions for trucks. So it begs the ques­tion as to how some of these are ap­proved,” said Khan.