Sascha Wil­son

Two taxi as­so­ci­a­tions in south Trinidad have raised their fares as stiffer COVID-19 re­stric­tions have put the brakes on their in­come. Strug­gling with less in­come since the virus sur­faced in the coun­try 14 months ago, the taxi dri­vers said they now have no choice.

Cus­tomers trav­el­ling the La Ro­maine and Bar­rack­pore routes now have to pay $2 ex­tra.

Ini­tial­ly, the taxis were on­ly al­lowed to op­er­ate at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty, but in June the ca­pac­i­ty was el­e­vat­ed to 75 per cent.

Due to the re­cent spike in COVID-19 in­fec­tions, how­ev­er, stricter re­stric­tions were im­posed, in­clud­ing re­vert­ing the taxis to 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

La Ro­maine Taxi Dri­vers’ As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Reynold Dass said yes­ter­day that while the fee has been raised, some dri­vers are still charg­ing the orig­i­nal fare be­cause of the eco­nom­ic hard­ships in the coun­try.

“Right now, the COVID-19 re­stric­tions are af­fect­ing us very bad due to the two pas­sen­gers now in our ve­hi­cle. It tak­ing an hour, an hour and a half to full. We are keep­ing the pro­to­cols, two pas­sen­gers and we are sani­tis­ing our ve­hi­cles.”

How­ev­er, he es­ti­mat­ed that on­ly about five per cent of the trav­el­ling pub­lic utilise the taxi ser­vice.

“Is like a ghost town here. Peo­ple are keep­ing to the pro­to­cols, they are wear­ing their masks. Is on­ly in the morn­ing you get one or two peo­ple and in the evening time. Let’s say be­tween 9 am to 3 pm hard­ly peo­ple on the road.”

Dass said his as­so­ci­a­tion has 250 reg­is­tered dri­vers but just about 150 of them are ply­ing their ve­hi­cles.

“Last year, on­ly about 10 per cent of the dri­vers were work­ing, now 75 per cent work­ing. Last year, we was still mak­ing some­thing small, now we are not mak­ing any­thing at all. We just mak­ing back our gas mon­ey and some­thing small to take back to our fam­i­ly.”

Asked if he would like fi­nan­cial sup­port from the Gov­ern­ment if the re­stric­tions are ex­tend­ed fur­ther on May 23, he said, “As our Prime Min­is­ter say, this coun­try right now don’t have no mon­ey. At least we still com­ing out here, we try­ing some­thing hop­ing we still take home some­thing to our fam­i­lies. We ap­pre­ci­ate it if they give us some­thing but we still mak­ing a lit­tle.”

Lament­ing that taxi dri­vers na­tion­wide would be fac­ing a sim­i­lar predica­ment, Dass said peo­ple were on­ly trav­el­ling to go to work, the su­per­mar­ket or the drug­store.

In an at­tempt to curb the virus which is spread­ing rapid­ly, on­ly busi­ness­es and work­ers deemed es­sen­tial are al­lowed to be open.