Joel Julien

A fe­male On-the-Job trainee at the Cou­va South Con­stituen­cy Of­fice was one of two women who were robbed at gun­point while trav­el­ling in a pri­vate hire “PH” car on Sat­ur­day, Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment Rudy In­dars­ingh said yes­ter­day.

In­dars­ingh said he was told of the “deeply dis­turb­ing news” when he got a call from the trau­ma­tised em­ploy­ee as she was mak­ing a re­port to the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion.

In­dars­ingh said the young la­dy was trav­el­ling in a ‘PH’ car to Price Plaza when she was robbed by a gun­man pos­ing as a pas­sen­ger in the said car.

She, along with an­oth­er young la­dy, was or­dered to hand over their valu­ables to the gun­man as the car ap­proached En­deav­our in Ch­agua­nas.

“We have seen in re­cent times where es­pe­cial­ly our fe­males in our so­ci­ety have been bru­tal­ly at­tacked in ve­hi­cles be­ing utilised for trans­porta­tion and this has been a bad way to start 2021,” he said.

In­dars­ingh said he was grate­ful that on­ly ma­te­r­i­al pos­ses­sions were lost.

“Count­less women have fall­en vic­tim to at­tacks from ‘PH’ dri­vers, los­ing their lives as this Gov­ern­ment fails con­tin­u­ous­ly to ad­dress the crime sit­u­a­tion in the coun­try,” he stat­ed.

“Ev­i­dent­ly, the deaths of young women and the at­tacks against pas­sen­gers of ‘PH’ cars still have not dri­ven this Gov­ern­ment to deal with crime frontal­ly,” In­dars­ingh said.

In­dars­ingh said the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of PH cars has to be prop­er­ly thought out and in­cor­po­rate all stake­hold­ers in the so­ci­ety.

He said with the mas­sive job loss­es tak­ing place across the coun­try “per­sons may turn and want to en­gage in PH try­ing to cre­ate a soft land­ing for them­selves or their re­spec­tive fam­i­lies in terms of earn­ing a rev­enue.”