Sascha Wil­son

San Fer­nan­do to Port-of-Spain taxi dri­vers are not back­ing down de­spite a furore by the trav­el­ling pub­lic over their de­ci­sion to raise the fare to $5 from June 1.

De­fend­ing their de­ci­sion to raise the fare from $17 to $22, San Fer­nan­do to Port-of-Spain Taxi Dri­vers As­so­ci­a­tion’s pres­i­dent Hay­den Whiskey said even with the in­crease they will still be op­er­at­ing at a loss.

Mem­bers of the pub­lic have tak­en to so­cial me­dia to vent their anger and frus­tra­tion over the in­crease. There have al­so been calls for a boy­cott with per­sons be­ing ad­vised to use oth­er modes of pub­lic trans­porta­tion.

How­ev­er, one of their mem­bers, An­dre Mor­ri­son, a trustee, has al­so spo­ken out against the $5 fare. He sug­gest­ed that the fare be in­creased by $3. Mor­ri­son said he came up with that fig­ure af­ter so­lic­it­ing the views of pas­sen­gers who were com­fort­able with the fare be­ing in­creased to $20.

While he is work­ing for half the in­come he earned pre-COVID-19, he said if his pas­sen­gers can­not af­ford the $20 come Mon­day he would ac­cept $17. He called on his col­leagues to have a heart. How­ev­er, Whiskey said they were dis­cussing rais­ing the fare even be­fore COVID-19 since the last time they raised the fare was in 2015.

Say­ing that rais­ing the fare to $20 is un­prof­itable and un­sus­tain­able, he said some dri­vers were bare­ly earn­ing a net in­come of $250 per day be­fore the coro­n­avirus. Even when the COVID-19 re­stric­tions are lift­ed and they re­sume op­er­at­ing at full ca­pac­i­ty, Whiskey said the fare will not be re­duced. “If we should get back to full ca­pac­i­ty of six as men­tioned ear­li­er, then we will now en­joy a mar­gin­al in­crease af­ter hav­ing to wait and take all that pain for the last five years.”

He was sur­prised that the trav­el­ling pub­lic felt the fare is un­rea­son­able when oth­er as­so­ci­a­tions have raised their fare as much as $10. “We choose to be rea­son­able. We are not break­ing even with this $22, we are ab­sorb­ing a loss.” He said most of his mem­bers will not qual­i­fy for the gov­ern­ment’s fu­el re­lief grant.

In a pub­lic ap­peal on his Face­book page, Nikoli Ed­wards, po­lit­i­cal leader of the Pro­gres­sive Par­ty, called on the As­so­ci­a­tion to set aside the pro­posed hike and in­stead lob­by the gov­ern­ment to make the grant avail­able to them. “I shall pledge my sup­port to the As­so­ci­a­tion if they choose this route and to al­so lob­by for any fur­ther state re­lief,” said Ed­wards.