AKASH SAMA­ROO

Lead Ed­i­tor–Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er is urg­ing the Gov­ern­ment to re­ject calls by some maxi taxi op­er­a­tors to in­crease the high­way speed lim­it for maxi taxis from 65 kilo­me­tres per hour to 80 km/h, ar­gu­ing that the in­dus­try must first demon­strate it can con­sis­tent­ly com­ply with the ex­ist­ing law.

Warn­er weighed in on one of the key de­mands raised by maxi taxi op­er­a­tors dur­ing this week’s in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, which dis­rupt­ed pub­lic trans­porta­tion ser­vices across Trinidad and left many com­muters strand­ed.

“The Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion’s de­mand to raise the speed lim­it for maxi taxis from 65 to 80 kilo­me­tres per hour must be un­equiv­o­cal­ly re­ject­ed,” Warn­er said.

He ar­gued that the in­dus­try’s case is weak­ened by the fact that many op­er­a­tors al­ready ex­ceed the cur­rent speed lim­it.

“The cur­rent speed lim­it for maxi taxis is 65 kilo­me­tres per hour, yet many op­er­a­tors rou­tine­ly ex­ceed it. It is not un­com­mon to see maxi taxis trav­el­ling at or above 80 kilo­me­tres per hour, ig­nor­ing the re­stric­tions al­ready in place,” he said.

Ques­tion­ing why the pub­lic should have con­fi­dence that com­pli­ance would im­prove if the speed lim­it were raised, Warn­er ar­gued that op­er­a­tors must first prove they can con­sis­tent­ly fol­low ex­ist­ing reg­u­la­tions.

“If some op­er­a­tors are un­will­ing to obey a 65 km/h lim­it, what pos­si­ble con­fi­dence can the pub­lic have that they will sud­den­ly be­come more dis­ci­plined if the lim­it is raised to 80?” he asked.

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the as­so­ci­a­tion’s ar­gu­ment that a high­er speed lim­it could im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy, Warn­er in­sist­ed that pas­sen­ger safe­ty must re­main the pri­or­i­ty.

“The first du­ty of any pub­lic trans­porta­tion sys­tem is not speed, it is safe­ty,” he said.

Warn­er ar­gued that Trinidad and To­ba­go al­ready faces sig­nif­i­cant road safe­ty chal­lenges and that now is not the time to re­lax re­stric­tions for pub­lic ser­vice ve­hi­cles.

In­stead, he called on the in­dus­try to fo­cus on im­prov­ing dri­ver con­duct, strength­en­ing dis­ci­pli­nary mech­a­nisms and sup­port­ing stricter en­force­ment against re­peat of­fend­ers.

“The so­lu­tion is not to raise speed lim­its, it is to raise stan­dards,” Warn­er said.

De­spite his crit­i­cism of the speed lim­it pro­pos­al, Warn­er de­clined to com­ment ex­ten­sive­ly on the broad­er dis­pute be­tween op­er­a­tors and the State, say­ing it would be pre­ma­ture to do so.

Ma­haraj: Za­k­our show­ing weak lead­er­ship

Mean­while, for­mer Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man and for­mer Trans­port Min­is­ter Dr De­vant Ma­haraj has ac­cused Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our of dis­play­ing weak lead­er­ship in his han­dling of the on­go­ing dis­pute.

In a state­ment, Ma­haraj com­pared the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion with the ma­jor maxi taxi protests of 2010 and 2011, when he served as PTSC chair­man un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“The con­trast be­tween how we han­dled those strikes and the cur­rent in­de­ci­sive ap­proach un­der Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our in 2026 is strik­ing, and not in a good way,” Ma­haraj said.

He re­called that the Gov­ern­ment at the time took a firm stance against op­er­a­tors who op­posed ef­forts to reg­u­larise pri­vate-hire taxis and in­crease com­pe­ti­tion in the trans­port sec­tor.

“Work­ing close­ly with Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, we re­fused to let com­muters be held hostage,” Ma­haraj said, adding that PTSC ser­vices were ex­pand­ed to min­imise dis­rup­tion to work­ers and school­child­ren.

Ma­haraj ar­gued that Za­k­our’s re­cent five-hour meet­ing with op­er­a­tors failed to pro­duce a res­o­lu­tion and re­flect­ed a re­ac­tive rather than proac­tive ap­proach.

“Op­er­a­tors sat with him for near­ly five hours, on­ly to emerge un­hap­py, with parts of the strike con­tin­u­ing de­spite the talks,” he said.

He al­so crit­i­cised what he de­scribed as the ab­sence of a ro­bust con­tin­gency plan, in­clud­ing stronger mo­bil­i­sa­tion of PTSC re­sources to off­set the im­pact of the strike.

“There has been no bold mo­bil­i­sa­tion of PTSC ca­pac­i­ty as a strong coun­ter­mea­sure, no clear pub­lic de­fence of open­ing routes or tack­ling il­le­gal op­er­a­tions, just di­a­logue, de­lay and more promis­es,” Ma­haraj said.

Warn­ing that a con­cil­ia­to­ry ap­proach could en­cour­age fu­ture dis­rup­tions, Ma­haraj said trans­port pol­i­cy must serve the wider pub­lic in­ter­est.

“Eli Za­k­our and the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion would do well to learn from the 2010/2011 play­book. Act with strength, pre­pare prop­er con­tin­gen­cies and gov­ern for the en­tire na­tion, not just man­age the loud­est voic­es,” he said.