South maxi operators show silent support

RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­[email protected]

While maxi taxi op­er­a­tors in South Trinidad say they sup­port the con­cerns raised by dri­vers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the na­tion­wide shut­down over out­stand­ing Gov­ern­ment pay­ments, il­le­gal com­pe­ti­tion and speed lim­it reg­u­la­tions, many have cho­sen to re­main on the road, say­ing they can­not af­ford to lose a day’s earn­ings.

As maxi taxi dri­vers along the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route con­tin­ued their protest for a sec­ond day fol­low­ing talks with Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, op­er­a­tors in Point Fortin, Pe­nal and Princes Town told Guardian Me­dia they shared many of the same frus­tra­tions but had fam­i­lies to sup­port and bills to pay.

While ex­press­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with their protest­ing col­leagues, they said stay­ing off the road would on­ly deep­en their own fi­nan­cial chal­lenges.

At the Kings Wharf maxi stand in San Fer­nan­do, dri­vers con­tin­ued op­er­at­ing as nor­mal de­spite calls for in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.

Sev­er­al dri­vers, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said they un­der­stood why their col­leagues chose to protest but not­ed that many op­er­a­tors live from trip to trip and have fam­i­lies and bills to sup­port.

Point Fortin dri­ver Dan Ma­haraj said while he sup­port­ed ef­forts to ad­dress is­sues af­fect­ing the sec­tor, he was not con­vinced that the re­cent meet­ing be­tween trans­port stake­hold­ers and Min­is­ter of Trans­port Eli Za­k­our would pro­duce mean­ing­ful re­sults.

Ma­haraj al­so ex­pressed con­cerns about the 65 km/h speed lim­it im­posed on maxi taxis, say­ing many dri­vers felt it was un­re­al­is­tic for ve­hi­cles op­er­at­ing on ma­jor road­ways.

Al­though he did not par­tic­i­pate in the protest, Ma­haraj said he re­spect­ed the de­ci­sion of dri­vers who did.

An­oth­er Pe­nal-San Fer­nan­do route op­er­a­tor, Dan Sama­roo, said he sym­pa­thised with the protest but could not af­ford to stay off the road.

“I sup­port them 100 per cent be­cause a lot of things need to be done,” Sama­roo said. “But I have bills to pay and chil­dren to send to school. I couldn’t stay home.”

He ar­gued that maxi taxi op­er­a­tors of­ten felt over­looked de­spite pro­vid­ing an es­sen­tial pub­lic ser­vice.

Oth­er dri­vers said one of their biggest frus­tra­tions re­mained com­pe­ti­tion from pri­vate-hire ve­hi­cles and route taxis al­leged­ly op­er­at­ing with­out prop­er au­tho­ri­sa­tion.

De­spite the protest else­where, dri­vers in south Trinidad re­port­ed nor­mal pas­sen­ger loads, with most routes op­er­at­ing on their reg­u­lar sched­ules.