KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

For many com­muters this week, get­ting to work, school or prob­a­bly try­ing to make it to an ap­point­ment on time has be­come a re­al chal­lenge, as maxi taxi op­er­a­tors take in­dus­tri­al ac­tion across Trinidad.

But, why ex­act­ly are they strik­ing? Guardian Me­dia spoke to sev­er­al op­er­a­tors who say the strike is not about a sin­gle is­sue but mul­ti­ple:

• Crack down on il­le­gal

PH taxi op­er­a­tions

Fol­low­ing the meet­ing with Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our on Mon­day, Route One Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Eon He­witt said op­er­a­tors made lit­tle progress on the is­sue, claim­ing the min­is­ter in­di­cat­ed it was a mat­ter for the po­lice.

“No, no. There is noth­ing; we got nowhere re­al­ly with that. He (Za­k­our) says that’s for the po­lice, so we had to in­form him that he is in charge of the traf­fic war­dens and the li­cence of­fi­cers,” He­witt said.

• In­crease the high­way speed lim­it for maxi taxis from 65 km/h to 80 km/h

Cur­rent­ly, maxi taxis are re­strict­ed to 65 km/hr, while pri­vate ve­hi­cles are per­mit­ted to trav­el at up to 80 km/hr. 

Op­er­a­tors ar­gue that the low­er speed lim­it makes it dif­fi­cult to main­tain ef­fi­cient sched­ules, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing peak pe­ri­ods.

Af­ter meet­ing with Za­k­our on Mon­day, the speed lim­it re­mains the same, but promis­es were made.

• Up­grade and im­prove maxi taxi hubs and ter­mi­nals

Op­er­a­tors say trans­port hubs and ter­mi­nals al­so re­quire up­grades, im­proved main­te­nance and bet­ter se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures.

They ar­gue that pas­sen­gers and dri­vers alike would ben­e­fit from safer and more ef­fi­cient trans­port in­fra­struc­ture, but, they say, ac­cord­ing to Za­k­our, that’s not with­in his re­mit. 

He­witt said, “The Min­is­ter is of the opin­ion that trans­port can’t deal with in­fra­struc­ture. That is for the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, so the ques­tion was asked, well, there’s some­thing called con­tracts, as the min­is­ter of trans­port, you can give out a con­tract.”

How­ev­er, when Guardian Me­dia reached out to Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John on the mat­ter yes­ter­day, her re­sponse via her Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tion of­fi­cer was that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty lies with­in the Min­istry of Trans­port. 

• Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route pass­es

An­oth­er con­cern the dri­vers said they could not see eye-to-eye with the Trans­port Min­is­ter was the is­sue of Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route pass­es.

He­witt said, “They were ask­ing for a lot of stuff for it to go on the bus route, and that was a no-no for us... You can’t have 50 pass­es and 2,500 red band, and you have to car­ry all those doc­u­ments in case a man want a pass.”

• Ad­dress es­ca­lat­ing crime 

af­fect­ing op­er­a­tors and pas­sen­gers

The dri­vers al­so com­plained that they face in­creas­ing threats while op­er­at­ing along routes. They are con­cerned about their safe­ty and that of their pas­sen­gers. But, they say Za­k­our redi­rect­ed that con­cern to the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry.

• Cre­ate a sys­tem to al­low op­er­a­tors to make NIS con­tri­bu­tions

 Dri­vers al­so want a sys­tem cre­at­ed to al­low op­er­a­tors to make NIS con­tri­bu­tions, but they were told that falls un­der the Fi­nance Min­istry. Guardian Me­dia made sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact Za­k­our on this mat­ter, but he did not re­spond.