East­ern Di­vi­sion po­lice say they will not con­done il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty, even as vil­lagers along the North East Coast plead for lee­way to al­low white pri­vate bus­es to op­er­ate from the of­fi­cial taxi stand in San­gre Grande.

The is­sue came to a head last week dur­ing a pub­lic meet­ing in­volv­ing po­lice and res­i­dents of To­co, Matelot and sur­round­ing dis­tricts, af­ter com­plaints about poor shel­ter, long walk­ing dis­tances in bad weath­er, and lim­it­ed trans­port op­tions af­ter hours.

While po­lice agreed to tem­porar­i­ly al­low the To­co/Matelot taxi stand to share space with Ma­yaro taxis from to­day, they in­sist­ed that the white bus­es could not legal­ly op­er­ate from the stand since they were not reg­is­tered taxis.

Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Christo­pher Pam­ponette, head of the East­ern Di­vi­sion, told vil­lagers he un­der­stood their plight but would not bend the law.

“Please don’t feel that the po­lice are ob­lig­at­ed to con­done any breach of the laws,” he said. “Be­cause if we by our ut­ter­ances are quot­ed as con­don­ing those breach­es … then we might as well give up our hats.”

Pam­ponette ex­plained that while the pri­vate bus­es did fill crit­i­cal trans­port gaps—es­pe­cial­ly af­ter 7 pm when reg­is­tered taxi dri­vers stopped work­ing—al­low­ing them to op­er­ate from the of­fi­cial stand would cre­ate le­gal and en­force­ment prob­lems.

“That is just open­ing the door,” he said. “At what stage are you go­ing to close it in re­la­tion to oth­er ve­hi­cles that are not reg­is­tered taxis?”

He added, “You are open­ing an av­enue for dis­crim­i­na­tion. When I say I al­low these ve­hi­cles on the taxi stand, and some­one else is not reg­is­tered and is told they can’t, at what stage am I go­ing to say you are com­mit­ting an of­fence?”

Pam­ponette said he would con­sult with oth­er au­thor­i­ties to con­sid­er a broad­er so­lu­tion, but cau­tioned, “Please do not ask the po­lice to go con­trary to the law.”

The pub­lic meet­ing fol­lowed a push by lo­cal coun­cil­lor An­ishia Williams Pen­ny and sev­er­al vil­lagers who raised is­sues of safe­ty, lack of re­strooms, and ex­po­sure to the el­e­ments since the To­co/Matelot red band maxi stand was re­lo­cat­ed from Brier­ley Street to Hen­der­son Street.

Vil­lager Hud­son Mc­Clatchie said the dis­pute be­tween pri­vate op­er­a­tors and red band max­is had es­ca­lat­ed un­nec­es­sar­i­ly.

“They greedy. They on­ly think about them­selves and for­get about oth­ers,” he al­leged. “The white bus op­er­a­tors are ful­ly aware that op­er­at­ing their bus is il­le­gal. They need to come to­geth­er and reg­u­larise their op­er­a­tions.”

An­oth­er res­i­dent, An­der­ston Zoe of Matelot, said he sup­port­ed the stand’s re­lo­ca­tion but ques­tioned why on­ly the To­co/Matelot route had been tar­get­ed. He al­so ac­knowl­edged that red band max­is could not meet all the needs of com­muters.

“When there are no red band maxi taxis on the stand, who cease to op­er­ate the To­co/Matelot Route ser­vice by 7 pm, the on­ly avail­able form of trans­port are the white bus­es,” he said.

Zoe called for dis­cus­sions be­tween the white bus and red band maxi op­er­a­tors to find an am­i­ca­ble so­lu­tion.

Glen­da James, an­oth­er vil­lager, said res­i­dents re­lied on the white bus­es for emer­gen­cies and late-night trans­port.

“You can call on them at any hour and they will re­spond—not with the red band maxi or taxi,” she said.

De­spite the firm le­gal po­si­tion from the po­lice, many vil­lagers con­tin­ued to plead for le­nien­cy to al­low the white bus­es to keep op­er­at­ing with­out ha­rass­ment.