Rapheal John-Lall

Lo­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Uber say they have been meet­ing with the rel­e­vant au­thor­i­ties in the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor and will con­tin­ue to do so to en­sure they meet the le­gal re­quire­ments of op­er­at­ing in T&T.

In re­sponse to a state­ment from the Min­istry of Works cau­tion­ing the pub­lic about us­ing the high tech trans­po­ra­tion ser­vice,

Uber said: "For the past few months, Uber has been en­gag­ing stake­hold­ers in the pri­vate and pub­lic sec­tor and has ex­pressed its will­ing­ness to pro­vide the cit­i­zens of T&T with safe, re­li­able and in­ex­pen­sive trans­porta­tion op­tion."

Uber be­gan op­er­a­tions in T&T on Mon­day morn­ing and the Works Min­istry is seek­ib­ng le­gal ad­vice to de­ter­mine if the ser­vice can con­tin­ue to op­er­ate with­in this coun­try's leg­isla­tive frame­work.

In an emailed re­sponse to ques­tions from the T&T Guardian, Uber said their pres­ence in T&T will con­tribute to the lo­cal econ­o­my.

"Uber's en­try in­to this im­por­tant Caribbean mar­ket pro­vides op­por­tu­ni­ties for hun­dreds of Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans to be their own boss­es and gen­er­ate an in­de­pen­dent in­come. It ex­pands the trans­porta­tion op­tions avail­able to res­i­dents and vis­i­tors alike. And it pro­vides ad­di­tion­al safe­guards for users of all forms of trans­porta­tion, not avail­able to­day. Uber wants to be a part of the so­lu­tion and of the mod­ern­iza­tion of Trinidad's mo­bil­i­ty sys­tems and tourist econ­o­my.