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Friday, August 8, 2025

Maxi Concessionaires back off from

union march

by

Radhica De Silva
2501 days ago
20181003
Rodney Ramlogan

Rodney Ramlogan

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Hav­ing been paid al­most $19 mil­lion in out­stand­ing salaries, the As­so­ci­a­tion of Maxi Taxi School Trans­port Con­ces­sion­aires says it will not join in the amal­ga­mat­ed trade union march to save Petrotrin, which be­gins to­day (Wednes­day) and ends in Port-of-Spain on Fri­day.

Dubbed the “Moth­er of all March­es,” the three-day march is ex­pect­ed to in­clude a new­ly unit­ed del­e­ga­tion of trade union­ists, in­clu­sive of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM), Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC), Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions (FI­TUN) and the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU).

Dur­ing an in­ter­view on Tues­day, pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion Rod­ney Ram­lo­gan said they did not want to dis­rupt the school term by par­tic­i­pat­ing in an­oth­er three days of protest march­es even though he sup­port­ed the trade union move­ment.

Now that they were paid, Ram­lo­gan said they want­ed to make good on their com­mit­ment to take stu­dents safe­ly to school. Ram­lo­gan, who led his team on sev­er­al months of protests, said even though the Min­istry an­nounced it had cleared out­stand­ing salaries, a to­tal of $1.7 mil­lion was with­held be­cause of dis­crep­an­cies in pay­ment.

“The Min­is­ter said school maxi taxis dri­vers have to re­im­burse $1.7 mil­lion. We want to know why. All our claim forms have to be stamped by the prin­ci­pals of the var­i­ous schools as proof that we pro­vid­ed the ser­vice. If the Min­istry fails to pay, they are con­tin­u­ing to in­fringe on the rights of maxi taxi dri­vers,” Ram­lo­gan said.

He al­so said that PTSC mon­i­tors the ac­tiv­i­ties of the bus dri­vers.

“If we have mon­i­tors, why are they say­ing they can­not pay us?” Ram­lo­gan said. He added that 90 per cent of the maxi taxi dri­vers were paid short.

Ex­press­ing hope that the dis­crep­an­cies could be ironed out, Ram­lo­gan said, “We want to thank the Min­is­ter of Works for his in­ter­ven­tion in mak­ing sure we get our mon­ey. I al­so want to thank Mr Ian He­witt, the pres­i­dent of the All Route Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion for stand­ing in so­lid­i­ty with us,” Ram­lo­gan said.

He said the maxi dri­vers were ea­ger to re­turn to a state of nor­mal­cy.

“If the Gov­ern­ment had not paid us, we would have joined the march to Port-of-Spain but we will not com­pro­mise the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. We are ea­ger­ly await­ing dis­cus­sions with the Pub­lic Ser­vice Trans­port Cor­po­ra­tion on how we are go­ing to move for­ward with this term. We have not re­ceived any claim form as yet and we are hop­ing there will be no fur­ther de­lays in pay­ments,” Ram­lo­gan added.

The three-day march ad­ver­tised as Oil Joins with Sug­ar will be­gin at 9 am at the Pointe-a-Pierre Round­about and will end at Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va at 4 pm. On Thurs­day it will be­gin at Rien­zi and end at Aranguez Sa­van­nah. On Fri­day, the march will be­gin at 9 am from the Aranguez Sa­van­nah and end at Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade in Port-of-Spain where a ral­ly will be held from 10 am.


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