The Min­istry of Works and Trans­port last week an­nounced two ini­tia­tives aimed at al­le­vi­at­ing some of the woes as­so­ci­at­ed with ve­hi­cle trans­ac­tions.

In the first in­stance, Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke in­di­cat­ed two tem­po­rary sites for ve­hi­cle in­spec­tions at the Lar­ry Gomes Sta­di­um in Mal­abar and Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Cou­va. This was deemed crit­i­cal to re­duc­ing the mas­sive lines now be­ing wit­nessed at the main Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do in­spec­tion sites.

The oth­er is­sue was the fu­ture ac­qui­si­tion of cam­eras for ve­hi­cles to be used by li­cens­ing of­fi­cers con­duct­ing dri­ving tests in or­der to mon­i­tor that ac­tiv­i­ty.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, both ac­tiv­i­ties are plagued by the in­ef­fi­cien­cy and cor­rup­tion sur­round­ing the di­vi­sion’s op­er­a­tions for decades.

Cit­i­zens have for years heard of ef­forts to root out the Di­vi­sion rogue el­e­ments, who con­tin­ue to sti­fle the free flow of the sys­tem in an ef­fort to so frus­trate cit­i­zens that they, in turn, see il­le­gal­i­ty as the on­ly way out.

Cit­i­zens may re­call that sev­er­al years ago, the im­pres­sion was giv­en that there was an un­der­cov­er po­lice unit op­er­at­ing with­in the di­vi­sion seek­ing to find the per­pe­tra­tors of these acts.

Yet, here we are to­day, be­ing told of yet an­oth­er plan aimed at one of the most cor­rupt acts per­pe­trat­ed by em­ploy­ees with­in the di­vi­sion, since it is not on­ly the Li­cens­ing Of­fi­cers who fa­cil­i­tate bribes for per­mits. How­ev­er, is the good­ly Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er so naive as to think such a mea­sure would stamp out the cor­rup­tion in this ac­tiv­i­ty?

Truth be told, all that would hap­pen then is that the ac­tiv­i­ty will be con­duct­ed be­fore ap­pli­cants reach that as­pect of the trans­ac­tion, which, by the way, is what hap­pens now. In­deed, many un­scrupu­lous dri­ving in­struc­tors have forged such strong re­la­tion­ships with Li­cens­ing em­ploy­ees that these cor­rupt acts run like a par­al­lel busi­ness churn­ing out thou­sands of dol­lars month­ly for its un­scrupu­lous agents.

Let’s not al­so for­get the ap­par­ent well-or­gan­ised ac­tiv­i­ty where­by stolen ve­hi­cles, du­pli­cate chas­sis and num­ber plates are be­ing processed through the sys­tem, in­clud­ing via the le­git­i­mate Li­cens­ing de­part­ments. In this re­gard, Com­mis­sion­er Clarke can­not on­ly point fin­gers at the pri­vate in­spec­tion sta­tions, since these lo­ca­tions op­er­ate with per­mis­sion from the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion, which trains those pri­vate agents and should al­so do reg­u­lar mon­i­tor­ing of them to en­sure com­pli­ance with the law.

The irony in all this is that the Di­vi­sion is now at­tempt­ing to clean up its act via a new elec­tron­ic sys­tem that could re­move some as­pects of the phys­i­cal in­volve­ment of the per­pe­tra­tors of these il­le­gal acts from the sys­tem al­to­geth­er.

How­ev­er, from ex­am­ples and com­plaints we have re­ceived, the elec­tron­ic sys­tem is, per­haps by de­vice, cre­at­ing new hic­cups in the sys­tem and per­pet­u­at­ing the in­con­ve­nience to per­sons seek­ing to con­duct busi­ness with the Di­vi­sion.

That an ap­point­ment sys­tem for in­spec­tions is be­ing be­lat­ed­ly im­ple­ment­ed this week, on­ly tells cit­i­zens just how chaot­ic things are in this par­tic­u­lar state en­ti­ty.

The con­tin­ued malaise at the Di­vi­sion can­not be ex­plained, save to say too many peo­ple stand to lose too much to see it run­ning as an ef­fi­cient body. Ei­ther way, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and Com­mis­sion­er Clarke owe it to the pub­lic to fix the woes with­in the Di­vi­sion.