Taxi dri­vers and res­i­dents in com­mu­ni­ties from Ce­dros to South Oropouche staged a “dri­ve slow” mo­tor­cade and fiery protests si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly yes­ter­day, as they called on the au­thor­i­ties to fix the roads.

Point Fortin Taxi Dri­vers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent John David com­plained, “The protests and the dri­ve slow is about the road con­di­tion. The whole of the south west­ern penin­su­lar is in a mess, the road is bad.”

Not­ing that the high­way from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin has been un­der con­struc­tion for over a decade, he said some parts are fin­ished and should be ac­ces­si­ble to taxi dri­vers.

David is de­mand­ing prop­er main­te­nance of the roads, par­tic­u­lar­ly in La Brea. He added that for the most part, they usu­al­ly spent over $4,000 to re­pair their ve­hi­cles.

With sev­er­al taxi dri­vers now us­ing CNG, he said they have to go to San Fer­nan­do to get CNG be­cause there is no sup­ply in Point Fortin.

An­oth­er taxi dri­ver, Clive Bernard, com­plained that dur­ing the mo­tor­cade, his tyre went in­to a pot­hole at Ves­signy and his col­leagues had to lift his van out.

“Dur­ing our peace­ful protest, with the po­lice hum­bug­ging us where we could not car­ry out peace­ful protest, a car end up giv­ing me a bad dri­ve and I had no oth­er means but to pull away from the car. The po­lice pulling the cars to come and they force me to go down in this hole, near­ly three-quar­ters of my wheel was in the hole and the back of my van was up in the air,” Bernard com­plained.

Arthur Lewis, a res­i­dent, al­so claimed he was stand­ing on the side of the road with a stick in his hand, sup­port­ing the dri­vers, when three of­fi­cers ver­bal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ed him. He in­tends to lodge a re­port at the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty.

La Brea Taxi Dri­vers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Shel­don Fer­nan­dez al­so com­plained, “When we taxi dri­vers raise the fees be­cause of the con­di­tions of the roads, be­cause it cost­ing us ex­pense every week, I not ex­ag­ger­at­ing, peo­ple will vex...but what can we do. We have to fix the car to trans­port you all. We re­al­ly fed up with the con­di­tions of the road and we want the au­thor­i­ties to do some­thing.”

He said they have made sev­er­al com­plaints over the years but noth­ing has been done.

Sup­port­ing the dri­vers, Ce­dros coun­cil­lor Shankar Teelucks­ingh said the fish­er­men in the Ce­dros area we al­so suf­fer­ing due to a lack of fu­el.

“Due to three land­slides along the 96 km along Chatham Main Road to Ce­dros, we have a lot of re­stric­tions where a lot of goods ser­vices can­not pass through that land­slide,” he said.

De­clar­ing that enough is enough, he said if by to­day there is no feed­back from the var­i­ous agen­cies, he is sup­port­ing fur­ther ac­tion by the dri­vers and res­i­dents.