EDITORIAL - Tax Administration Jamaica has a case to answer

Corruption in the system for the issuing of driver's licences and the licensing of motor vehicles has been a long-standing problem. Successive administrations have failed lamentably to find answers and develop strategies to deal with these problems.

But now, the Senate appears determined to reform the licensing system in a better-late-than-never effort, which we applaud.

However, we see that the head of the Traffic Division and Tax Administration Jamaica (TAJ) are engaged in a public point-scoring squabble about who is to blame.

We submit that none of this will solve the problems that have seen unqualified persons (below the age of 17), or illiterate ones, being issued licences, the Government being robbed of revenue by unscrupulous persons, and car thieves being able to sell vehicles with impunity and profiting from their crimes.

What it will do, however, is to undermine attempts to tackle a formidable challenge that has faced the country for many years.

Senior Superintendent Radcliffe Lewis, the traffic chief, has established a reputation for plain speaking. And he did not mince words in the Senate earlier this week, taking aim at the TAJ.

In his comments, the policeman said: "All of us will have to clean TAJ and clean it squeaky clean. If you not doing corruption there, you are not saying anything, you are not cutting any dash."

The superintendent described TAJ as uncooperative and suggested that those responsible for thwarting corruption are crippled by fear.

SSP Lewis seemed to have hit an institutional nerve. And in a reaction to this newspaper, TAJ called his remarks "unprofessional, very unfortunate and grossly unfair".

Remember the AG's findings

One may say it was inappropriate for SSP Lewis to have come down so hard on the TAJ when his own organisation is riddled with rogue cops guilty of facilitating corruption. In fairness, though, we subscribe to the view that the superintendent has a responsibility to help tackle lawlessness and corruption whereever it rears its head.

The truth of corruption at the TAJ has been corroborated repeatedly in the findings of the Auditor General's Report. The 2010 report, for example, identified reams of inaccurate, invalid and inconsistent data. Based on those findings, the auditor general recommended that the officers responsible for granting licences in breach of the Road Traffic Act and Regulations be subject to disciplinary action, and the persons who received those licences "should be placed on a stop list and their licences should not be renewed until they have attained the appropriate age and have been duly retested".

There is really no point in pretending that we do not have a problem. The TAJ says when breaches are identified, it calls in the police. The agency will need to convince the country that it has taken the recommendations of the auditor general seriously and has acted on them in the interest of thwarting the efforts of incompetent or corrupt employees.

To give reform of the driver's licensing system its best chance of success, the relevant parties need to come together with constructive suggestions.

The question that needs to be answered has nothing to do with the senior superintendent's personality and forthrightness. Instead, the focus must be on the measures that should be employed to shine a light in the darkest corners of TAJ to identify and punish the offenders.

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