Maxi dri­vers are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to raise the amount of pas­sen­gers they are al­lowed to car­ry from 50 per cent to two thirds as op­posed to the $2000 fu­el sup­port grant be­ing of­fered by the Gov­ern­ment.

The grant, which was an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Sat­ur­day, was dis­cussed by sev­er­al red band maxi dri­vers at City Gate yes­ter­day.

Many of them felt the mon­ey would bare­ly cov­er their fu­el ex­pens­es.

“I think some of us do like $300 a day in Diesel,” said Ger­ald Williams, a maxi dri­ver for 25 years.

“It’s less peo­ple they car­ry­ing and they have to make more runs,” he said con­cern­ing the cost of fill­ing up ver­sus the rev­enue earned per day.

This con­cern about rev­enue proved to be a big­ger con­cern, as dri­vers ex­pressed more in­ter­est in hav­ing the reg­u­la­tion con­cern­ing the amount of pas­sen­gers they could car­ry raised from 12 pas­sen­gers to 16 pas­sen­gers in 24 seater max­is.

“We are ask­ing for 60 per cent and the rea­son for that is we are see­ing enough so­cial dis­tanc­ing be­ing car­ried with 16 pas­sen­gers if every­one sit to a seat,” said Ter­rence Bry­on, who felt that such a change would be a big­ger help.

“We be­lieve that 16 pas­sen­gers is com­fort­able enough for us right now, the 75 is good when­ev­er that time is. But the 16 for now for me is much more com­fort­able than $2000 dol­lars, be­cause $2000, we burn­ing like $175 to $200 in fu­el (per day),” he said

Un­der this arrange­ment, all sin­gle seats would be oc­cu­pied while dou­ble seat swould have one oc­cu­pant. The back seat which could house four peo­ple, would in­stead hold two at each end, al­low­ing for so­cial dis­tanc­ing, By­ron said.

How­ev­er By­ron ad­mit­ted that cur­rent­ly, dri­vers strug­gled to get a trip of 12.

“We un­der the 50 per cent bar­ri­er right now and every­body be­lieve we at 50 per cent but we are way un­der 50 per cent at this point,” he said.

This was the harsh re­al­i­ty ex­pe­ri­enced by dri­ver Dale St John, who came out to work the Ari­ma to Port- of- Spain route for the first time since the lock­down be­gan. He had spent the last two month stay­ing at home with his young daugh­ter.

“I came down from Ari­ma with three pas­sen­gers,” he said, “Re­mem­ber this is Sun­day, no church, hard­ly any­body com­ing out. For the stay at home, you can’t re­al­ly get much,” he added.

“You might get the 12 in town, but when you up in Ari­ma to come back down you run­ning emp­ty or at most three or four peo­ple,’ said Williams.

St John was among sev­er­al dri­vers who spent long pe­ri­ods wait­ing at the trans­port hub wait­ing on the hand­ful of com­muters who were trav­el­ing.

The wait was so long many dri­vers opt­ed to wash their ve­hi­cles and dis­cuss oth­er con­cerns such as po­ten­tial clash­es be­tween maxi-own­ers and dri­vers con­cern­ing the grant, as some felt own­ers may pock­et the grant in­stead of al­low­ing dri­vers to utilise it.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to call Route Two Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent Li­nus Phillip for com­ment on the sit­u­a­tion, but calls went unan­swered yes­ter­day.