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From December, people living in rural communities will be able to stay where they are and have services of the Licensing Division come to them.
The Ministry of Works and Transport launched its mobile office initiative on Tuesday with the unveiling of two buses.
The service is in its soft-testing phase and, as such, the buses will operate from the Caroni office of the Licensing Division for the next few weeks.
Works and Transport Minister Rohan Sinanan said the ministry will be monitoring the covid19 situation.
“About a year and a half ago, we spoke about getting these mobile buses into rural areas,” he said.
“This came out as a result of the transformation we have done over the last couple years where we have moved from the manual system to a fully-computerised service.”
Sinanan said the goal is for customers to only require a face-to-face visit if there is a problem with the transaction.
Customers in areas such as Matelot, he said, will no longer have to go out of their way to access licensing services
“The buses will go into rural areas once or twice for the month and residents can make an appointment and access all the transactions from renewal of permits to taxi badges, you name it.”
Sinanan said one of the buses will also visit Tobago. He said the idea is to get to the rural communities without having to open a physical office in those areas.
“I remember my first speech as a minister. I was scared to talk about Licensing Office. I would put two lines at the end of my speech. Some ministers would have bypassed Licensing altogether because there was a certain stigma attached.
“We have gone past that. We have a lot of problems still, but we are on the right path. We have moved from where ministers would not have mentioned licensing office…to where yesterday, when I spoke in the budget debate, I opened my speech praising Licensing Office. That in itself is a big achievement to staff of Licensing and the ministry.”
Sinanan said the ministry also plans to upgrade existing offices to make them more comfortable.
The buses will not be operating with cash. For now only Linx transactions will be accepted and, eventually, credit card payments. He said, eventually even driving tests can be done in communities using the buses.
He said each bus, fully outfitted, cost about $700,000.
“Compare that to a building which would have cost $10-15 million. It doesn’t make sense to build offices in rural areas. The buses will go there.”
Shiva Lakhan from Williamsville was the first customer to use the service on Tuesday.
“It was very fast,” he told Newsday.
“I was done in less than 15 minutes.”
He said the service is long overdue.
“In the past, you had to line up and wait for a lot of people to get in. I was lucky to be the first.”
Jagesar Roopchand said the service was comfortable and efficient. He said he would like to see the buses visit his Rio Claro community and save customers from that area the trouble of having to visit a licensing office.

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