(Trinidad Guardian) After receiving several complaints from young driver’s licence applicants that they have been asked to pay or “grease hand” to pass their driving tests, Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan says the Transport Division will be outfitted with their own vehicles for driving tests equipped with cameras and recording devices to end the illegal practice.
He was speaking at a media conference at the ministry’s retreat, held at the Civil Aviation Building, Piarco, on Saturday where he spoke about plans for the future layout of roads and drainage.
Sinanan said “One of the other areas I asked Transport Commissioner Clive Clarke to do is to have the Transport Division own the vehicles that we do driving tests with.
“These vehicles should be equipped with a 360-degree camera system, and recording devices so that if you fail your test you can go back into the archives and see exactly where you failed.
“Any conversations that take place in the vehicle should be recorded and these are some of the measures to ensure transparency in the system.”
He said that very soon the Transport Commissioner will be sending out a tender for vehicles to be used for driving tests.
These were some of the initiatives that were scheduled for implementation to prevent demands made to first-time driver’s licence applicants to pay a bribe to any member of the Licensing Office.
Transport Commissioner Clive Clarke said Licensing Office had received additional personnel to combat this problem.
He said that this was a serious challenge at Licensing, and most people would have faced this issue at some point in time when someone would have asked them to “contribute something” to successfully pass their driving test.
Clarke said he had invoked Chap 47 of the Motor Vehicles and Road Traffic Act, whereby he can approve almost anyone who has the requirement to be a driving test examiner.
He said this was done with several people who will now take on a policing role of that function, processes have also been changed at some testing sites that will now have multiple licensing officers.
Clarke explained this was done so that the student driver will not be “locked in” to a specific licensing officer to be issued his driving test, but a neutral person among several examiners.
He added that he was getting internal resistance which was expected from Licensing Office, however with the support of his Permanent Secretary, Sinanan and the new systems he was seeking to break the back of this racket that had been occurring for years.