Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

Route 2 Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Bren­ton Knights is call­ing for a heav­ier po­lice pres­ence on the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route (PBR) at night.

“We are a 24-hour ser­vice,” he said in an in­ter­view at City Gate, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

Knights said there has been more law en­force­ment along the PBR since the Gov­ern­ment re­fused to re­new 625 pri­vate PBR pass­es that ex­pired on Ju­ly 1, but this has been main­ly dur­ing the day.

“We see­ing the po­lice pres­ence there in terms of en­force­ment, we al­so saw a strong pres­ence of Li­cens­ing al­so. That is good, we have no is­sue with the au­thor­i­ties and them do­ing their law en­force­ment, at least the pres­ence will be good for us in terms of de­ter­rent...we would like to see the pres­ence al­so in the night,” he said.

Knights said there has al­ways been a chal­lenge for dri­vers with il­le­gal use or ex­ces­sive pri­vate ve­hi­cles on the PBR.

Af­ter PBR pass­es ex­pired on Tues­day, Min­is­ter of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Eli Za­k­our an­nounced that the Cab­i­net had ap­proved 100 new maxi-taxi PBR per­mits.

How­ev­er, Knights de­clined to com­ment on the min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment.

“With the strongest po­ten­cy, no com­ment at this point in time,” he stat­ed.

Last year, the as­so­ci­a­tion had al­so asked for the abil­i­ty to trans­fer own­er­ship of PBR pass­es to next of kin. Knights said they have pre­sent­ed all of their con­cerns to the new min­is­ter and were await­ing feed­back.

“We are open-mind­ed that they will be ad­dressed, it was in doc­u­ment form, we sent him a soft copy, and we de­liv­ered a hard copy,” he said.

He said he is op­ti­mistic that the as­so­ci­a­tion and min­istry can have prop­er con­sul­ta­tion on this long-stand­ing is­sue, as well as the im­prove­ment of the City Gate hub.