Richard Lord

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er and pres­i­dent of the Aux­il­iary As­so­ci­a­tion Ger­ard Whyms have crit­i­cised the Route 2 Maxi Taxi Dri­vers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Li­nus Phillip for mak­ing false claims against them.

Phillip has re­port­ed­ly said that his mem­bers were not con­sult­ed on moves to le­galise the op­er­a­tions of "PH" taxi dri­vers across the coun­try.But Warn­er raised ob­jec­tions to that claim."It is a mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the maxi-taxi dri­vers to state that they were not con­sult­ed on the mat­ter since they had and con­tin­ue to have av­enues by which they can sub­mit their con­cerns or rec­om­men­da­tions on the mat­ter to the min­istry," he in­sist­ed.

Warn­er said Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Ruben Cato and the min­istry's se­nior le­gal ad­vis­er, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, dis­cussed the pro­pos­al with the maxi-taxi and "PH" dri­vers at the min­istry's head of­fice on Au­gust 22.

Warn­er said a draft pro­pos­al con­tain­ing reg­u­la­tions were sub­se­quent­ly cir­cu­lat­ed for pub­lic com­ment.And Whyms yes­ter­day said Phillip was be­ing dis­hon­est when he re­port­ed­ly said that the ATA had au­tho­rised mem­bers that their PH op­er­a­tions were le­gal be­cause of ATA stick­ers.

Whyms said the stick­ers were in­tend­ed to show that the dri­vers were reg­is­tered mem­bers of the As­so­ci­a­tion.Whyms said the move to le­galise "PH" taxi dri­vers was in­tend­ed to im­prove the trans­porta­tion sys­tem for all com­muters in T&T.He said un­der the ex­ist­ing arrange­ments, a few maxi-taxi dri­vers/own­ers have a mo­nop­oly and they were caus­ing "thou­sands of com­muters no end of ex­treme suf­fer­ing on a dai­ly ba­sis."

Gov­ern­ment sources say moves were afoot to le­galise the op­er­a­tions of PH taxi dri­ves be­fore the end of the year.