Farley cautions licensing officers against harsh enforcement in Tobago

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

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

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

Au­gus­tine broke his si­lence on the top­ic 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 li­cens­ing de­part­ment wants to con­tin­ue to use their of­fice in a puni­tive way as op­posed to us­ing it in a way to man­age traf­fic and man­age how peo­ple use our road­ways and ve­hi­cles, we will use our of­fice and use our prop­er­ty and stand up on be­half of the peo­ple that they go to. 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 he took sim­i­lar ac­tion 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 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.”

Au­gus­tine said that while To­bag­o­ni­ans are gen­er­al­ly law-abid­ing, the is­land still lacks suf­fi­cient pub­lic trans­porta­tion. He not­ed that 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 blow 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.”

The Chief Sec­re­tary al­so ques­tioned if 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 you have any re­la­tion­ship with any­body in the for­mer gov­ern­ment. Ask him if he’s not PNM, why he did what he did to To­bag­o­ni­ans.”

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

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

When con­tact­ed for a re­sponse yes­ter­day, Clarke said he did not hear ex­act­ly what Au­gus­tine said and un­der­scored that he does not re­spond to claims on po­lit­i­cal plat­forms.

But the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er did say he will con­tin­ue to sup­port his of­fi­cers in To­ba­go.

“As far as I un­der­stand, the li­cens­ing de­part­ment con­tin­ues to have a cor­dial work­ing re­la­tion­ship be­cause we do have of­fi­cers in To­ba­go who re­port to the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er by law when it comes to law en­force­ment, and they con­tin­ue to fol­low the in­struc­tions of the Trans­port Com­mis­sion, and they con­tin­ue to car­ry on their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and du­ty un­der the law, which is pri­mar­i­ly to en­sure safe­ty on the na­tion’s roads, and there­fore we ful­ly en­dorse and sup­port the of­fi­cers we have in To­ba­go.”

Clarke al­so cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied hav­ing any con­nec­tion to the PNM through rel­a­tives or oth­er­wise.

The Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er al­so ve­he­ment­ly re­ject­ed any claims by the PNM that he was in­struct­ed to hold off on road­blocks in To­ba­go un­til af­ter the Jan­u­ary 12 THA elec­tions.

“We have had no form of ob­struc­tions from any­one; like­wise, we have had no in­struc­tions to car­ry out road ex­er­cis­es in To­ba­go or in any part of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Clarke said as a pub­lic ser­vant he an­swers to the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary of the Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion, and he is guid­ed by the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle and Road Traf­fic Act.

For­mer works and trans­port min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan al­so re­spond­ed to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia and sought to rub­bish that the 2023 in­ci­dent was due to a po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tive.

“The min­is­ter does not give the trans­port com­mis­sion­er any di­rec­tives on en­force­ment; that is one thing the min­is­ter does not have the au­thor­i­ty to do. So at least in my times, the min­is­ter had no in­flu­ence on those op­er­a­tions in To­ba­go and in Trinidad. Sec­ond­ly, when they had the is­sue in To­ba­go and he made the state­ment, the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er came out and said that this was a joint po­lice ex­er­cise, which was ini­ti­at­ed by the po­lice in To­ba­go. They were in­vit­ed by the po­lice in To­ba­go, and they were not sent by the min­is­ter from Trinidad,” Sinanan said.

Sinanan added that Au­gus­tine’s as­ser­tions are symp­toms of the “sil­ly sea­son” as the elec­tion ap­proach­es.

He is al­so ad­vis­ing the Chief Sec­re­tary that he may run afoul of the law if he kicks li­cens­ing of­fi­cers out of their To­ba­go build­ing.