For thou­sands of com­muters in south and east Trinidad, the crawl through traf­fic caused by road­side en­force­ment has be­come a fa­mil­iar source of frus­tra­tion. On Wednes­day, Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Clive Clarke told Par­lia­ment that the prob­lem has grown so acute that he has asked his of­fi­cers to avoid par­tic­i­pat­ing in some joint road­blocks with the po­lice.

Ap­pear­ing be­fore the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture, Clarke ac­knowl­edged pub­lic anger over en­force­ment ex­er­cis­es con­duct­ed dur­ing peak hours, when traf­fic vol­umes are at their high­est.

The mem­o­ry of the “Day of To­tal Polic­ing” on March 23, 2015, still looms large. On that day, a co­or­di­nat­ed na­tion­wide traf­fic lock­down by the Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) paral­ysed roads, stalled com­merce and sparked wide­spread out­rage. For­mer po­lice com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith lat­er de­scribed the op­er­a­tion as “a day of to­tal stu­pid­i­ty”.