The pres­i­dent of the Route 2 Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion, Bren­ton Knights, has called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­peal the re­cent in­crease in Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route (PBR) per­mit fees, while re­as­sur­ing that fares for pas­sen­gers are not ex­pect­ed to rise im­me­di­ate­ly.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Knights warned that the dou­bling of the cost for a per­mit could place added pres­sure on an al­ready strained pub­lic trans­port sec­tor. He al­so urged the Gov­ern­ment to en­gage with maxi taxi op­er­a­tors be­fore im­ple­ment­ing any fur­ther changes.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns about how the in­crease might af­fect pas­sen­gers, Knights said the as­so­ci­a­tion does not want to di­rect­ly pass on the cost. “Well, we don’t want to out­right and tell them that, and take that stand. That is not our po­si­tion as a re­spon­si­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion. What we do, we look at the risk as­sess­ment for op­er­a­tional cost in terms of be­ing vi­able. That will be a fac­tor, but our op­er­a­tional cost is be­ing af­fect­ed from many dif­fer­ent an­gles.

“And yes, that is part of it, but it’s not the first op­tion that we’re look­ing at. What we’re ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment is to re­peal this first, and let us have di­a­logue in the dis­cus­sion about where the oth­er fixed penal­ties, be­cause that will af­fect us al­so, too,” he said.

Knights fur­ther chal­lenged Min­is­ter of Trans­port Eli Za­k­our’s ra­tio­nale for the in­crease, ques­tion­ing why maxi taxis ap­pear to be the on­ly group af­fect­ed. He high­light­ed what he de­scribed as in­con­sis­ten­cies with­in the PBR unit, not­ing the range of per­mits is­sued over the years.

“In the PBR unit there are maxi taxi per­mits, there are tem­po­rary per­mits, let­ter per­mits and per­ma­nent per­mits. How it is you on­ly want maxi to sus­tain the PBR unit? And your claim to fame is you re­move 600 ve­hi­cles off the bus route, 600 let­ter per­mits that was in cir­cu­la­tion in the min­istry for many years that have not been paid, and I guar­an­tee you there is al­most sim­i­lar amount in the min­istry,” Knights said.

He added that the lack of con­sul­ta­tion with op­er­a­tors has height­ened con­cerns with­in the sec­tor, leav­ing many feel­ing over­looked in de­ci­sions that di­rect­ly af­fect their liveli­hoods.