RALPH BAN­WARIE

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan in­sists the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion is us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to cor­rect ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties that have ex­ist­ed with­in the sys­tem for as much as six decades.

Ad­dress­ing com­plaints by the pub­lic about the long lines at lo­ca­tions and in­con­ve­nience in get­ting ve­hi­cles in­spect­ed as a re­sult of the ex­er­cise, Sinanan told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that the new sys­tem is work­ing.

“The ob­jec­tive of this com­put­erised project is to clean up the sys­tem that ex­ist­ed for the last 60 years with no one ad­dress­ing the prob­lem,” Sinanan said.

Not­ing oth­er com­plaints about mis­takes on cer­ti­fied copies when own­ers take their ve­hi­cles for in­spec­tion at the ap­proved garages, Sinanan said, “It is a clean-up process and for a so­lu­tion to the prob­lem, the per­son has to present them­selves in per­son at the Li­cens­ing Of­fice at Ca­roni or Port-of-Spain so that records will be up­dat­ed.”

He said soon, all the ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties per­tain­ing to ve­hi­cle in­spec­tions and oth­er is­sues will be com­ing to an end with the in­tro­duc­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy at the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion.

“What was hap­pen­ing be­fore with man­u­al in­for­ma­tion has cre­at­ed mis­takes and we are try­ing our best to clean up Li­cens­ing Of­fice. The com­put­er will not gen­er­ate a stick­er if the in­for­ma­tion is in­cor­rect on their data­base,” he said.

“Be­fore, when one goes for in­spec­tion, they get­ting stick­er with­out any in­spec­tion be­ing done. You pay a lil thing and gone your way. You get­ting stick­er at home or in rum shop, this has been go­ing on for years and no one saw it fit to make the cor­rec­tions.”

He added, “Present­ly, ve­hi­cles must be in­spect­ed and all in­for­ma­tion must be cor­rect. Com­put­ers are not ac­cept­ing any­thing that is in­cor­rect. What we are do­ing now is cor­rect­ing every­thing. No one at­tempt­ed to do it be­fore, every­thing was push­back, every­body get so ac­cus­tomed with Li­cens­ing Of­fice.”

Not­ing that the new sys­tem was forc­ing all mo­torists to go in­to Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion out­lets to sort out their doc­u­men­ta­tion, he said the days of cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ty will soon be over with the mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy.

“If we want to be on par with the Unit­ed States, it is time the clean­ing process takes place at Li­cens­ing Of­fice. When all records and reg­is­tra­tion are prop­er­ly done, if one wants to trans­fer a ve­hi­cle or re­new their dri­ver’s per­mit, they will be able to do it at home. The data­base will be able to pro­vide re­new­al of dri­ver’s per­mit, trans­fers of ve­hi­cle, re­plac­ing of en­gines etcetera at the own­er’s home by log­ging in to their com­put­ers and punch­ing in the rel­e­vant in­for­ma­tion,” the Min­is­ter said.

Sinanan al­so said to fa­cil­i­tate the in­spec­tion of cars, they will open 100 garages through­out the coun­try. He said they are al­so try­ing to get fleet own­ers to ap­ply to set up Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion-ap­proved in­spec­tion sites for their heavy ve­hi­cles to help al­le­vi­ate some of the pres­sure on the sys­tem.

“They are of­fer­ing all fleet own­ers of trucks this op­tion. The li­cens­ing of­fi­cer will come to them. They don’t have to bring the trucks to Li­cens­ing of­fice, no more line up to cause traf­fic jam.”

He said records al­so claim there are mil­lions of ve­hi­cles on the road but there are ve­hi­cles that crashed which nev­er came off the sys­tem.

“So, with­in a pe­ri­od of time, we will know how many ve­hi­cles are on the road,” he said.

Say­ing the sys­tem will al­so help in the fight against crime, Sinanan said at the end of the process, if a ve­hi­cle is stopped by a li­cens­ing of­fi­cer, po­lice or traf­fic war­den, when the dri­ver’s per­mit num­ber is punched in­to the sys­tem, all the dri­ver’s in­for­ma­tion will come up. This in­cludes if the dri­ver is want­ed on an out­stand­ing war­rant, is not the own­er or has court mat­ters pend­ing.