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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Maxi taxi driver gives free rides to the elderly

by

Charles Kong Soo
1920 days ago
20200419
Kenneth Persad

Kenneth Persad

CHARLES KONG SOO

Amidst the fear and un­cer­tain­ty of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic sweep­ing the world, there is so much about the virus that sci­en­tists and med­ical pro­fes­sion­als still do not know about.

With no known vac­cine de­vel­oped to date, and some COVID-19 pa­tients test­ing pos­i­tive af­ter re­cov­er­ing, the very best el­e­ments of hu­man na­ture come to the fore such as front­line work­ers, health­care and med­ical work­ers, farm­ers, from bus dri­vers, su­per­mar­ket work­ers to po­lice of­fi­cers, good news sto­ries like 78-year-old red band maxi taxi dri­ver Ken­neth Per­sad who gives free rides to se­nior cit­i­zens are like a breath of fresh air among the face-masked doom and gloom coro­n­avirus re­port­ing.

He may not be like the Most In­ter­est­ing Man in the World in the Dos Eq­uis beer com­mer­cial, how­ev­er, the Tu­na­puna na­tive is a colour­ful char­ac­ter and his maxi taxi re­flects his char­ac­ter.

A pho­to­graph of his beau­ti­ful moth­er Ri­ta Per­sad, his fa­ther Ralph Son­ny Per­sad, who died at 94 years, pic­tures of Per­sad at 40 and 19 in full re­galia suit re­veal that he was a long­time saga boy and a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle of his favourite ac­tor Paul New­man who peo­ple say re­sem­ble him adorn his maxi taxi.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at City Gate Per­sad said “When I’m com­ing down the road and I see peo­ple at a bus stop and I have a few seats avail­able, I’ll stop and ask them if they were wait­ing on a bus, to come in and I’ll give them a free ride; they don’t have to pay me any mon­ey.

“At their stop, they tell me thanks af­ter I give them a drop, some give me a lit­tle bless­ing and tell me God bless you.

“I’ve been do­ing this be­fore this coro­n­avirus, and giv­ing drops for my neigh­bours too, even be­fore maxi taxis were in­tro­duced in Trinidad in 1978, when I took kids to school I was 26 years and had a minibus back then.

“I used to take chil­dren to school for ten and 15 cents from Ari­ma to Hillview Col­lege and St Joseph Col­lege. I had four minibus­es to take kids from their home to school and back for $10 a month.”

He showed Guardian Me­dia a pho­to­graph of some of his charges from St Charles Kinder­gar­den School in Tu­na­puna who were be­tween the ages of three to five years.

Per­sad said he went back to the chil­dren’s homes, who were now mid­dle-aged, and on­ly found one, a Mrs Guisep­pi was still liv­ing there, the oth­ers had ei­ther moved or mi­grat­ed.

He said he sold his four minibus­es when the maxi taxi ser­vice came in­to be­ing in the late 70s and bought his first maxi taxi when he was 40 years old.

Per­sad said he got burned when he bought a maxi taxi for a friend who was a preach­er, he put out $18,000 cash and mort­gaged his house, pur­chased un­der his friend’s name, he found out he was conned with­in three months, but he will leave all rob­bers to God to take care of them.

He said af­ter that in­ci­dent, he bought a maxi taxi for his broth­er and son, when they reached the age of 22 years to be el­i­gi­ble to be maxi taxi dri­vers.

Per­sad said he end­ed up with the best maxi taxi in Trinidad, a Hi­no mod­el HAH 6798 and he al­so gave out al­manacs.

He said he was a Boy Scout since he was 13 years with the Third Tu­na­puna Scout Troop, he be­came a Queen Scout at 15, at­tain­ing the Queen’s Scout Award, which is the high­est youth award achiev­able in the scout­ing move­ment in the Com­mon­wealth and he fash­ioned his own per­son­alised wog­gle out of cow bone.

Per­sad said he could swim half a mile at 13 years and could swim from Tyri­co to Mara­cas Bay and back.

Among his ex­ploits, he saved three chil­dren from drown­ing, res­cued a child from a car go­ing down­hill and broke up a fight be­tween two men with one armed with a pitch­fork and at 15, he was award­ed four Joe D’Ar­cy Awards, the high­est award for gal­lantry grant­ed for spe­cial hero­ism or ex­tra­or­di­nary ac­tion in­volv­ing risk of life.

With the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and pub­lic trans­port man­date that ve­hi­cles op­er­ate at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty in a bid to slow down the spread of the virus, Per­sad said that it was very dif­fi­cult for him as well as oth­er maxi taxi dri­vers.

He said some­times he wait­ed for four hours to get the max­i­mum lim­it pas­sen­gers he was al­lowed to car­ry and made at least two trips, al­so line up for fu­el at the gas sta­tion and af­ter that, he would on­ly have time to go home.

De­spite the hard­ships, how­ev­er, Per­sad said he loved the maxi taxi dri­ver life and help­ing the needy.


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