Augustine warns against heavy-handed licensing enforcement

AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor – Pol­i­tics

Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine has pledged to push back against any heavy-hand­ed en­force­ment by li­cens­ing of­fi­cers, warn­ing that To­bag­o­ni­ans must not be un­fair­ly tar­get­ed.

The To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) leader al­so has dis­missed claims that li­cens­ing of­fi­cers are wait­ing un­til af­ter the Jan­u­ary 12 To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) elec­tions to be­gin is­su­ing the re­cent­ly dou­bled traf­fic fines.

Au­gus­tine broke his si­lence on the is­sue at a TPP pub­lic meet­ing at the Calder Hall Play­ing Field, in the elec­toral dis­trict of Scar­bor­ough/Mt Grace, on Thurs­day night.

The Chief Sec­re­tary de­clared:

“Any­time the Li­cens­ing De­part­ment wants to con­tin­ue to use its of­fice in a puni­tive way, as op­posed to us­ing it to man­age traf­fic and how peo­ple use our road­ways and ve­hi­cles, we will use our of­fice, use our prop­er­ty and stand up on be­half of the peo­ple that they go af­ter. And I don’t care how they feel about that.”

In a stern mes­sage to Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke, Au­gus­tine re­mind­ed him that the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly owns the prop­er­ty oc­cu­pied by the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion in To­ba­go and warned that the THA would not hes­i­tate to with­draw ac­cess to the fa­cil­i­ty, if nec­es­sary.

“You can’t pun­ish my peo­ple and then I pay the rent for you. If you want to pun­ish my peo­ple, find your own build­ing. If you can’t an­swer un­der the Fifth Sched­ule to the THA, find your own build­ing,” Au­gus­tine pro­claimed.

The TPP leader said this is what he did in 2023, when he felt li­cens­ing of­fi­cers were un­fair­ly tar­get­ing To­bag­o­ni­ans un­der what he claimed was a po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tive from the then Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment.

“East­er come, Li­cens­ing all of a sud­den, they reach up. Jazz, all of a sud­den they reach up. Car­ni­val, the biggest non­sense I’ve seen. I’m com­ing off the air­port for Oc­to­ber Car­ni­val. Po­lice and li­cens­ing right out­side the air­port,” he re­count­ed.

Au­gus­tine said that while To­bag­o­ni­ans are gen­er­al­ly law-abid­ing, the is­land still lacks suf­fi­cient pub­lic trans­porta­tion. He said peo­ple who want to op­er­ate as blue-band maxi-taxi dri­vers are not be­ing giv­en le­git­i­mate op­por­tu­ni­ties to do so and, as a re­sult, he will re­sist ef­forts to pe­nalise those dri­vers in the in­ter­im.

He al­so sought to rub­bish claims from for­mer PNM sen­a­tor Lau­rence His­lop that, come the day af­ter the THA elec­tions, To­bag­o­ni­ans will feel the full ef­fect of the new fines.

“Mr His­lop said Li­cens­ing will be in To­ba­go from Tues­day morn­ing, as though Li­cens­ing is di­rect­ed where to go by the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate. And so at first I said that is non­sense. But then I said, ah, PNM just talk about things that they just do them­selves and try to make it look as though every­body else do­ing it too,” he said.

The Chief Sec­re­tary al­so ques­tioned whether the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er has PNM ties.

“Ask Mr Clarke, the Com­mis­sion­er of Trans­port, if he re­lat­ed to any­body in the for­mer gov­ern­ment. Ask him if he have any re­la­tion­ship with any­body in the for­mer gov­ern­ment. Ask him if he’s not PNM, why he did what he did to To­bag­o­ni­ans,” he said.

Au­gus­tine said he took note of a re­cent Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture, where Clarke was pressed by par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to ex­plain why his di­vi­sion car­ried out road­blocks dur­ing peak traf­fic times.

Clarke said such ex­er­cis­es re­main nec­es­sary to en­force the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act but con­ced­ed their tim­ing can be deeply dis­rup­tive.

Mean­while, Au­gus­tine al­so told his sup­port­ers to re­mem­ber that the PNM gov­ern­ment raised traf­fic fines in the past.

He told His­lop:

“You did not stand up for us in the past be­cause your gov­ern­ment was in charge. We don’t need you to stand up on our be­half now. You were qui­et when Im­bert was rais­ing traf­fic fines. Be qui­et now. You sup­port­ed a trans­port com­mis­sion­er when he stood on TV, sat down next to Ro­han Sinanan and lied about the in­ci­dent with my wife. Keep sup­port­ing him now and keep your mouth qui­et.”