Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (DO­MA) pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud says be­tween 15 and 20 per cent of com­muters head­ing in­to the cap­i­tal were late for work yes­ter­day, as the na­tion­wide maxi taxi protest dis­rupt­ed trans­port ser­vices.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Aboud warned that the sit­u­a­tion ex­posed long-stand­ing weak­ness­es in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s mo­bil­i­ty sys­tem.

He said the fig­ure was based on an in­for­mal morn­ing as­sess­ment among down­town busi­ness­es and com­muters, with de­lays rang­ing from 30 min­utes to an hour.

“Peo­ple want to main­tain their liv­ing and that is un­der­stand­able,” he said, not­ing that de­spite de­lays, the city re­mained large­ly op­er­a­tional.

He added that ab­sen­teeism ap­peared lim­it­ed, but cau­tioned that the sit­u­a­tion re­mained flu­id.

“More or less, the city is func­tion­ing in a rea­son­able way,” Aboud said.

He re­newed calls for ur­gent di­a­logue be­tween trans­port op­er­a­tors and Gov­ern­ment, ar­gu­ing that com­mu­ni­ca­tion re­mains the most ef­fec­tive path to res­o­lu­tion amid the on­go­ing in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.

Aboud said pro­longed dis­rup­tion risked deep­er eco­nom­ic con­se­quences for the cap­i­tal, par­tic­u­lar­ly if com­muter flow con­tin­ues to be af­fect­ed over mul­ti­ple days.

He al­so point­ed to what he de­scribed as a lack of con­tin­gency plan­ning in the na­tion­al trans­port sys­tem.

“I think it is fair to say that we don’t have a great fall­back sys­tem in terms of prepa­ra­tion for an in­ci­dent which dis­rupts the flow of peo­ple,” he said.

“There is no or­gan­ised mass tran­sit sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he added, re­new­ing his long-stand­ing ar­gu­ment for a more struc­tured na­tion­al trans­port frame­work.

Aboud went fur­ther, sug­gest­ing that a rail sys­tem should be re­con­sid­ered as part of long-term plan­ning.

“One of the most crit­i­cal as­pects of our na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture which is ab­sent is a reg­u­lar rail­way sys­tem,” he said, ar­gu­ing that such in­fra­struc­ture could ease pres­sure on road-based trans­port dur­ing dis­rup­tions.

On the maxi taxi op­er­a­tors’ protest, Aboud ex­pressed sym­pa­thy for dri­vers and op­er­a­tors, while stress­ing that griev­ances must be clear­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the pub­lic.

He urged both sides to re­turn to di­a­logue to avoid pro­longed dis­rup­tion.