Motorists endure overnight lines at San Fernando Licensing Office

KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

From Cou­va in cen­tral Trinidad, Pe­nal in the South and San­ta Flo­ra in the South-West, mo­torists con­verged at the Li­cens­ing Of­fice in San Fer­nan­do on Sun­day af­ter­noon, drawn by ur­gency and fear of mount­ing penal­ties. By then, the line had al­ready stretched near­ly 600 me­tres, crawl­ing from Princess Mar­garet Street to the Bal­isi­er Av­enue com­pound.

For many, the wait had be­come an en­durance test. Dri­vers ar­rived with meals in hand, prepar­ing for hours, some­times days, of un­cer­tain­ty.

Some were mak­ing their sec­ond at­tempt af­ter be­ing turned away last week.

Oth­ers spoke of a shad­ow econ­o­my form­ing out­side the gates, where places in the queue were re­port­ed­ly sold for be­tween $300 and $400.

In­side the com­pound, staff ac­knowl­edged the frus­tra­tion but point­ed to a fa­mil­iar con­straint – in­ad­e­quate man­pow­er.

Dave Small trav­elled from San­ta Flo­ra with a truck be­long­ing to his South Oropouche em­ploy­er. He joined the line at 11.30 pm out­side Skin­ner Park and re­mained there overnight, alone in his ve­hi­cle among dozens of oth­ers. When the line be­gan to move at 6 am yes­ter­day, he es­ti­mat­ed he would reach the in­spec­tion bay around 1.30 pm.

“I just sit in the ve­hi­cle. I might nod off a lit­tle bit, but I have things to eat. I might go on the in­ter­net… do some­thing to make it up,” Small said while wait­ing in­side the yard.

It was his sec­ond at­tempt in less than a week.

Last Wednes­day, he ar­rived in the area around 2 am and did not reach the of­fice un­til close to mid­day. By 3.25 pm, he was near­ing the in­spec­tion bay when ser­vices were halt­ed for the day.

He ac­knowl­edged that mo­torists them­selves share some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­ges­tion, not­ing that many fail to check their doc­u­ments un­til the last minute.

With in­creased fines now in force, he said, the rush has be­come in­evitable.

Nathaniel Wash­ing­ton adopt­ed a dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy. He ar­rived around 5.45 pm on Sun­day, parked his car be­neath the over­pass along the Rien­zi Kir­ton High­way, re­turned home to Cou­va, and came back at mid­night to hold his place. By 10 am, he had en­tered the Li­cens­ing Of­fice and was inch­ing clos­er to the in­spec­tion bay to com­plete a ve­hi­cle trans­fer.

Stressed by the wait, Wash­ing­ton said the sys­tem need­ed faster ser­vice and more in­spec­tion bays.

Wash­ing­ton and oth­er mo­torists said the de­mand has fu­elled an in­for­mal trade in queue po­si­tions.

Ac­cord­ing to him, sev­er­al ve­hi­cles would hold places overnight, then va­cate them in the morn­ing for pay­ing dri­vers.

“It is stress­ful be­cause there is a lot of com­mo­tion go­ing on, a lot of skip­ping in line, and mon­ey. Mon­ey does talk.”

Wash­ing­ton be­lieves the re­cent in­crease in traf­fic fines has dri­ven the surge, push­ing mo­torists to ur­gent­ly reg­u­larise their doc­u­ments.

Ear­li­er this month, the Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion con­firmed an in­crease in ve­hi­cle own­er­ship trans­fers, at­tribut­ing it large­ly to mo­torists who failed to com­plete trans­fers with­in the legal­ly re­quired time­frame.

The Min­istry re­it­er­at­ed that ve­hi­cle own­er­ship trans­fers must be com­plet­ed prompt­ly un­der the Mo­tor Ve­hi­cles and Road Traf­fic Act to avoid con­ges­tion, de­lays and le­gal con­se­quences.

While mo­torists com­plained about the pace of in­spec­tions, which can take up to 15 min­utes per ve­hi­cle, staff told Guardian Me­dia that staffing short­ages are the pri­ma­ry con­straint. They said that al­though 19 em­ploy­ees are re­quired to man­age in­spec­tions, on­ly six were on du­ty.

As for the re­port­ed sale of queue po­si­tions, staff said any such ac­tiv­i­ty oc­curs out­side the com­pound and falls un­der po­lice ju­ris­dic­tion.

Calls to Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke yes­ter­day were un­suc­cess­ful.

In the mean­time, the Min­istry of Trans­port is­sued a no­tice ad­vis­ing that trucks and trail­ers bear­ing T-reg­is­tra­tion, with a Max­i­mum Gross Weight of 3,200 kilo­grammes and over, may now pay for and con­duct ve­hi­cle in­spec­tions at Ve­hi­cle Man­age­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (VM­COTT) fa­cil­i­ties in Beetham Gar­dens, Port-of-Spain; Union Hall, San Fer­nan­do; and Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go.