Im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter learn­ing of the de­ci­sion to ren­der un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, the $1 ex­it fee im­posed on maxi taxi op­er­a­tors us­ing the City Gate fa­cil­i­ty, the charge was stopped yes­ter­day. It came as a shock, Route Two Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Li­nus Phillip said in an in­ter­view. But now, he says he is con­cerned of the con­se­quences if the fa­cil­i­ty is tak­en from the hands of the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) and in­to the as­so­ci­a­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to Phillip, PTSC was sub­sidised by the Gov­ern­ment in its main­tain­ing of the fa­cil­i­ty and this is like­ly to be lift­ed.

"With a dol­lar user fee you not go­ing to be able to run the fa­cil­i­ty with­out be­ing sub­sidised by the Gov­ern­ment," he said. "That's not go­ing to cut it. It's a big fa­cil­i­ty," he added. He said while he was "all for it," if con­trol of the fa­cil­i­ty was giv­en to the maxi-taxi op­er­a­tors, there had to be sub­sis­tence from Gov­ern­ment. He said op­er­a­tors were yet to get a state­ment from PTSC man­age­ment.

He said while he was pleased with the or­der to re­pay the ex­it fees, the as­so­ci­a­tion was wait­ing on Gov­ern­ment to de­ter­mine the fu­ture of the com­plex. "We have to hear what the Gov­ern­ment go­ing to do now," he said. He said the as­so­ci­a­tion was ex­pect­ed to meet soon to dis­cuss the Privy Coun­cil rul­ing.

PTSC stops $1 col­lec­tion

PTSC chair­man De­vant Ma­haraj said while he ac­knowl­edged the rul­ing of the na­tion's high­est court, the prob­lem of main­te­nance of the City Gate fa­cil­i­ty had to be looked at. In a phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, he not­ed the $.75 col­lect­ed from the $1 ex­it charge col­lect­ed from op­er­a­tors was used to up­keep the fa­cil­i­ty. "Ob­vi­ous­ly giv­en the rul­ing we would have to look at the main­te­nance of the fa­cil­i­ty," he said. He not­ed that be­cause of his re­spect for the rule of law, he im­me­di­ate­ly or­dered the ex­it charge be stopped af­ter learn­ing of the judg­ment yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, he said, the mat­ter should have been set­tled by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. "This is some­thing the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion could have dealt with be­fore," he said. He said it was one of sev­er­al law­suits chal­lenged un­der the PNM Gov­ern­ment and lost at the ex­pense of tax­pay­ers. He is ex­pect­ed to meet soon with Route Two Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Li­nus Phillip as a means of form­ing bet­ter re­la­tions.