3-day strike begins

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­[email protected]

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,000 maxi taxi op­er­a­tors—the lifeblood of the na­tion’s pub­lic trans­port sys­tem – will come to a planned halt to­day in protest of long-stand­ing griev­ances.

With these maxi taxis off the roads for the next three days, thou­sands of com­muters will have to look for al­ter­na­tive trans­port op­tions such as Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) bus­es, taxis and PH cars to get to and from their des­ti­na­tions.

This move can lead to a dip in pro­duc­tiv­i­ty for busi­ness­es, slow down the econ­o­my and af­fect the turnout at schools.

The strike will start at 5 am with a mo­tor­cade in Tarou­ba and end in Port-of-Spain, with maxi taxi dri­vers stand­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with each oth­er.

The planned ac­tion has al­ready trig­gered con­cern and wor­ry from com­muters who re­ly on the es­sen­tial ser­vice.

Maxi taxi dri­vers pro­vide trans­port ser­vices to 14 zones across the coun­try through their red, green, yel­low, brown and black band maxi taxis.

Rough­ly 3,500 of these maxi taxis op­er­ate dai­ly from Ch­agua­nas to San Fer­nan­do and along the East-West cor­ri­dor.

As­so­ci­a­tion of Maxi Taxi Trinidad and To­ba­go (AMTTT) sec­re­tary Vick­ash Kissoon­dath told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that stag­ing this boy­cott was the last thing the op­er­a­tors want­ed to do.

“We didn’t want to reach this stage. But things have come to a break­ing point.”

He ad­mit­ted that thou­sands of com­muters, in par­tic­u­lar the work­ing class, are like­ly to be af­fect­ed.

At Ch­agua­nas and City Gate yes­ter­day, many com­muters ad­mit­ted they were not aware of the planned strike.

Oth­ers felt the im­pend­ing boy­cott was un­war­rant­ed.

As Jemi­ah Mas­si­ah, 23, walked down the steps, lead­ing to the Port-of-Spain/ Ari­ma load­ing bay at City Gate, she said the news of the shut­down was wor­ry­ing and con­cern­ing, as she de­pend­ed on the maxi taxi ser­vice to at­tend class­es at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus.

“The max­is are very im­por­tant, and it will be very hard with­out them for the next three days,” she com­plained.

Mas­si­ah said she would have to use an­oth­er mode of trans­port, prefer­ably a taxi, which would be far more ex­pen­sive.

While cheap­er, she said the PTSC was not re­li­able and ef­fi­cient with its ser­vice.

“These is­sues should not be hap­pen­ing. The pub­lic re­lies a lot on the maxi taxi ser­vices. I find it is an in­con­ve­nience for us ... the pub­lic. But I know the dri­vers have a lot of is­sues that they have been rais­ing and that needs to be re­solved. The Gov­ern­ment needs to do a lit­tle bet­ter when it comes to stuff like this.”

An­oth­er com­muter, Ed­win Ri­vas, said the strike would be dev­as­tat­ing for the work­ing class, who have no oth­er means of trans­port.

“I hope PTSC gets the bus ser­vice to run a good way to fa­cil­i­tate those who can’t get a maxi,” Ri­vas said.

In the bustling bor­ough of Ch­agua­nas, Wayne Quashie sat in a green band maxi at Busy Cor­ner wait­ing for it to be filled with pas­sen­gers.

With beads of per­spi­ra­tion run­ning down his face, Quashie said maxi taxis are all that he us­es.

He dis­agreed with the op­er­a­tors for with­hold­ing their ser­vices.

“It is not right be­cause of the pop­u­la­tion ... not every­body is able to with­stand that be­cause some peo­ple have dif­fer­ent sched­ules com­pared to oth­ers. I can’t do noth­ing be­cause peo­ple in Trinidad doh have a voice re­al­ly.”

David Guer­ra al­so com­plained that while he was in sup­port of the op­er­a­tors fight­ing for bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions, he felt three days was too long.

“It’s go­ing to crip­ple this coun­try.”

Over the next 72 hours, Kissoon­dath said the coun­try’s pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­el could dras­ti­cal­ly slide.

“Again, we go down to the pro­duc­tiv­i­ty of the coun­try to­mor­row (to­day). Let’s say from be­ing 80 per cent pro­duc­tive on a nor­mal day, I think it might drop down to 20 per cent.”

Kissoon­dath de­nied the im­pend­ing strike was a way of hold­ing the trav­el­ling pub­lic to ran­som.

“I wouldn’t say hold the coun­try to ran­som. But we are try­ing to plead with our pas­sen­gers ... our com­muters to un­der­stand the prob­lems that we face on a dai­ly ba­sis for years now. And noth­ing has been done about it. We have been meet­ing the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties through the cor­rect chan­nels, through the right min­istries, through the line min­is­ter and noth­ing.”

He said the pop­u­la­tion needs to un­der­stand how se­ri­ous their is­sues have be­come.

Kissoon­dath said they held nu­mer­ous meet­ings with the of­fi­cials of the Min­istry of Trans­port for the past five months to have their plights re­solved.

“It has on­ly been promis­es. I was high­ly dis­ap­point­ed.”

Kisoon­dath said all they have been re­ceiv­ing is a round-around.

For weeks, he said, maxi taxi op­er­a­tors have been dri­ving around with blue rib­bons tied on­to their ve­hi­cles “as a silent protest.”

They thought this would have trig­gered some re­sults. How­ev­er, noth­ing ma­te­ri­alised.

“What pushed us over the edge? We have a min­is­ter right now of trans­port and civ­il avi­a­tion who thinks that we are a joke and we are not a force to be reck­oned with. We are go­ing to show him ex­act­ly what maxi taxis do for T&T.”

He hoped by with­hold­ing their ser­vices, it would grab the Gov­ern­ment’s at­ten­tion and bring their prob­lems to a grind­ing halt.

“We want things signed, sealed and stamped.”

Kissoon­dath said he would wait to see what con­tin­gency plan PTSC would pro­vide for com­muters re­quir­ing trans­port.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia sent a What­sApp mes­sage to Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­koor re­gard­ing the planned shut­down, but he did not re­spond up to press time.

Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion’s De­mands

*In­crease the high­way speed lim­it for maxi taxis from 65 km/h to 80 km/h.

*Ad­dress es­ca­lat­ing crime af­fect­ing op­er­a­tors and pas­sen­gers.

*Crack down on il­le­gal PH taxi op­er­a­tions.

*Pay out­stand­ing monies owed to dri­vers for trans­port­ing school­child­ren.

* Up­grade and im­prove maxi taxi hubs and ter­mi­nals.

*Cre­ate a sys­tem to al­low op­er­a­tors to make NIS con­tri­bu­tions.

*De­liv­er on com­mit­ments made dur­ing meet­ings with trans­port of­fi­cials.