Crowds ease as some maxi drivers return to work on second day of strike

Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­[email protected]

Even as strike ac­tion for Route Two Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion mem­bers en­tered its sec­ond day yes­ter­day, sev­er­al dri­vers re­turned to the streets con­duct­ing busi­ness as usu­al.

From as ear­ly as 6 am, red band max­is were seen ac­cept­ing pas­sen­gers in no­tice­ably larg­er num­bers on the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route (PBR) than on Mon­day.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia at the Croisee, San Juan, maxi taxi con­duc­tor Bri­an Trouchen said he al­so no­ticed a sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er num­ber of maxi taxis on the road, not­ing that while he was grate­ful for more dri­vers re­turn­ing to work to as­sist the pub­lic, he was al­so sym­pa­thet­ic to the con­cerns and griev­ances of the dri­vers, which led to the strike in the first place.

While in the Croisee, sev­er­al maxi taxis were seen on the east­bound and west­bound lanes of the PBR pick­ing up pas­sen­gers, as a steady flow of traf­fic was ob­served with po­lice of­fi­cers and traf­fic war­dens keep­ing close watch of the ac­tiv­i­ties.

Along­side maxi taxis, how­ev­er, were reg­is­tered taxis and PH (pri­vate hire) ve­hi­cles, who made use of the open­ing of the PBR to ply their trade, of­fer­ing trips to com­muters to Port-of-Spain and Curepe.

Route Two Maxi Taxi pres­i­dent As­so­ci­a­tion Bren­ton Knights ap­peared on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew Pro­gramme yes­ter­day, where he said that while dri­vers were giv­en the man­date to “rest and re­flect” for three days, dif­fer­ent fac­tors may have prompt­ed dri­vers to re­turn to work.

“I will say we’ll (re­turn) to about 60 to 65 per cent be­cause the ma­jor­i­ty of the mem­ber­ship is in sup­port of con­tin­u­ing to rest and re­flect.

“This fight is not over and the Route Two will en­sure we get the re­sults we are ask­ing for, even if we have to strate­gise and come again.”

Knights al­so said he was par­tic­u­lar­ly dis­turbed by a state­ment the Com­mis­sion­er re­port­ed­ly made while trans­port­ing pas­sen­gers.

“What is the need for the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice to make his of­fice and his port­fo­lio be em­bar­rassed by com­ing in the ve­hi­cle and mak­ing a state­ment and say­ing, ‘Hey, in this ve­hi­cle, all you have to wor­ry about is get­ting locked’,” Knights said.

He ar­gued that the com­ment over­looked years of com­plaints from maxi taxi op­er­a­tors about rob­beries and crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty on pub­lic trans­port routes.

Re­fer­ring to the preva­lence of PH taxis and un­of­fi­cial max­is or “white bus­es” poach­ing cus­tomers from le­git­i­mate maxi taxi op­er­a­tors, Knights said these con­cerns and oth­ers were raised dur­ing a joint meet­ing with oth­er maxi taxi as­so­ci­a­tions and Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our on Mon­day af­ter­noon.

He lament­ed, how­ev­er, that re­spons­es at the meet­ing were not sat­is­fac­to­ry.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed Tu­na­puna, where sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er crowds were ob­served at the side of the PBR near the Tu­na­puna Mar­ket and Streatham Lodge, com­pared to Mon­day.

One com­muter, Maria McKen­zie, said while the re­turn of some max­is pro­vid­ed some ease, PH taxis op­er­at­ing on the PBR al­so pro­vid­ed some re­lief.

“Af­ter yes­ter­day, I just want­ed to find a ve­hi­cle and get mov­ing... I wasn’t in any frame of mind to be picky. Once they stopped, I was go­ing in.”