KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie says the Gov­ern­ment will not back down from its crack­down on il­le­gal PH dri­vers, de­spite calls from the Op­po­si­tion for le­nien­cy.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the Mid-Year Bud­get Re­view in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Je­re­mie said the Gov­ern­ment could not ig­nore what he de­scribed as the se­ri­ous pub­lic safe­ty risks linked to PH trans­porta­tion.

He said there had been re­peat­ed in­ci­dents of se­ri­ous crimes in­volv­ing pas­sen­gers us­ing PH trans­porta­tion, in­clud­ing the re­cent killing of 12-year-old Mer­cedez Layne, stress­ing that pub­lic safe­ty con­cerns re­main a key con­sid­er­a­tion for the Gov­ern­ment.
He said the mat­ter is now un­der re­view by the Gov­ern­ment.

Je­re­mie said, “There are nu­mer­ous in­stances of ab­duc­tions, rape and mur­der of pas­sen­gers, pri­mar­i­ly girls and women, who have sought trans­porta­tion from PH dri­vers. Just last week, the coun­try was tru­ly hor­ri­fied. We were all dev­as­tat­ed by the mur­der of young Mer­cedes Lane when she was placed in a PH taxi, ac­cord­ing to me­dia re­ports. We on this side are bring­ing that sit­u­a­tion un­der re­view. And those on that side shed croc­o­dile tears for those peo­ple.”

Re­ject­ing claims by the Op­po­si­tion that in­creased fines for PH dri­vers were too harsh, Je­re­mie dou­bled down on Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion that it would not “bend the law” and that ex­ist­ing mea­sures re­main nec­es­sary to main­tain or­der and pro­tect the pub­lic.

“We will not bend the law, as they have done time and time again, as they have found it con­ve­nient. So, try as they may to mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion and to cre­ate di­vi­sions and un­war­rant­ed dis­con­tent, they will not suc­ceed.”

He fur­ther ac­cused Op­po­si­tion mem­bers of be­ing in­con­sis­tent on the is­sue, sug­gest­ing that some were seek­ing to ease penal­ties for il­le­gal op­er­a­tors while fail­ing to ful­ly ac­count for the risks faced by pas­sen­gers.

The crack­down on PH dri­vers has al­so been an on­go­ing con­cern for maxi taxi op­er­a­tors.

Dur­ing a re­cent strike, maxi taxi op­er­a­tors called on Trans­port Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our to en­sure stricter en­force­ment against il­le­gal PH dri­vers.
How­ev­er, they were told the is­sue falls un­der the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty.