The Taxi Dri­vers Net­work says in­stead of be­ing scrapped, the De­mer­it Points Sys­tem (DPS) should be re­struc­tured to en­sure fair­ness to the mo­tor­ing pub­lic.

At a me­dia con­fer­ence in San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day, Net­work Pres­i­dent Adri­an Acos­ta said the sys­tem serves a pur­pose in pe­nal­is­ing dan­ger­ous dri­ving. How­ev­er, the cri­te­ria for dis­qual­i­fy­ing dri­vers should be re­con­sid­ered.

He said the Net­work is seek­ing a meet­ing with Min­is­ter of Trans­port Eli Za­k­our to dis­cuss the mat­ter.

The DPS, im­ple­ment­ed in May 2020, was de­signed to mon­i­tor, track, and im­prove dri­vers’ be­hav­iour as part of a broad­er ef­fort to re­duce reck­less dri­ving and im­prove road safe­ty.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has crit­i­cised the sys­tem, claim­ing it has been abused by law en­force­ment and has cre­at­ed fear and frus­tra­tion among mo­torists, rather than pro­mot­ing safe­ty.

Ear­li­er this month, she an­nounced plans to scrap the DPS en­tire­ly, stat­ing it was in­ef­fec­tive and should be re­placed with a more prac­ti­cal road safe­ty strat­e­gy.

Some stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing Ar­rive Alive, have ap­pealed to the gov­ern­ment to im­prove rather than elim­i­nate the sys­tem, cit­ing its role in re­duc­ing fa­tal­i­ties.

Acos­ta was crit­i­cal of de­mer­it points be­ing is­sued for mi­nor in­frac­tions such as blown bulbs, worn tyres, cracked wind­screens, and fail­ure to get ve­hi­cles in­spect­ed.

“We do not mind points stay­ing for dan­ger­ous dri­ving, run­ning on the shoul­der, break­ing red lights or dri­ving un­der the in­flu­ence of al­co­hol. We will sup­port the de­mer­it points stay­ing for those things, but for the rest, we pray they scrap all the oth­er points. To me, that is very bur­den­some on the dri­ving pop­u­la­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go and taxi dri­vers by ex­ten­sion,” Acos­ta said.

He said while he was not mak­ing ex­cus­es for il­le­gal be­hav­iour, $1,000 fines are dif­fi­cult to pay un­der cur­rent eco­nom­ic con­di­tions and li­cence sus­pen­sions might push dri­vers—es­pe­cial­ly those who re­ly on the job for in­come—to­wards un­law­ful ac­tiv­i­ty.

Acos­ta claimed sev­er­al taxi dri­vers had al­ready lost their li­cences.

Net­work Sec­re­tary David Mack said a dri­ver could leave home with all sys­tems func­tion­ing—lights, horn, wipers—and ex­pe­ri­ence a sud­den mal­func­tion. If stopped by po­lice, he be­lieves of­fi­cers should is­sue a record­ed warn­ing and give the dri­ver a chance to rec­ti­fy the is­sue be­fore is­su­ing a tick­et. If the dri­ver fails to act with­in a set time, po­lice should then is­sue a tick­et us­ing the TTPS data­base as ev­i­dence.

“I have dri­vers who lit­er­al­ly dodge the law be­cause of the num­ber of points they have. They are about to lose their li­cence, and if they do, they can­not sup­port their fam­i­lies.

“I have had to go with dri­vers to the Li­cens­ing Of­fice to write let­ters on their be­half,” Mack said.

He added that some po­lice of­fi­cers make it their busi­ness to ha­rass taxi dri­vers, is­su­ing tick­ets they know will not hold up in court.

Re­gard­ing re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cours­es for dri­vers whose li­cences have been dis­qual­i­fied, Acos­ta said the Net­work sup­ports the con­cept. How­ev­er, he said the cours­es should be ad­min­is­tered by the Li­cens­ing Of­fice at a cost of around $500, rather than through pri­vate bod­ies which cur­rent­ly charges $1,300–$2,500.

The Net­work al­so called for a na­tion­al crack­down on PH (pri­vate hire) dri­vers, who they claim are in­fil­trat­ing of­fi­cial taxi hubs and caus­ing con­flicts with reg­is­tered taxi dri­vers. Let­ters are to be sent to Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der and act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Ju­nior Ben­jamin, seek­ing meet­ings to ad­dress the is­sue.

Acos­ta said le­git­i­mate taxi dri­vers pro­vide an es­sen­tial ser­vice, of­ten work­ing from 3 am to 7 pm dai­ly, trans­port­ing pas­sen­gers through heavy traf­fic and over di­lap­i­dat­ed roads. He crit­i­cised law en­force­ment for pe­nal­is­ing dri­vers for ve­hi­cle con­di­tions while ig­nor­ing the state of the roads them­selves.

“Is the road car wor­thy?” he asked.