An­na-Lisa Paul

The T&T Taxi Dri­vers Net­work has part­nered with TTWe­Safe to launch a com­muter safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty app en­abling pas­sen­gers to trans­mit crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion to emer­gency con­tacts dur­ing the jour­ney to their des­ti­na­tion.

Join­ing of­fi­cials yes­ter­day in Port-of-Spain as he demon­strat­ed how it works, co-founder Joel Hold­er said it had be­come nec­es­sary to pro­vide ad­di­tion­al pro­tec­tion for the na­tion’s women as they ac­cess pub­lic trans­port dai­ly.

He said he was gal­va­nized to act fol­low­ing the death of Ashan­ti Ri­ley in De­cem­ber 2020.

The 18-year-old was last seen on No­vem­ber 29, 2020, as she got in­to a taxi near her San Juan home and her body was found on De­cem­ber 4, 2020, in a riv­er at Cake Lands, San­ta Cruz.

One month lat­er on Jan­u­ary 29, An­drea Bharath al­so dis­ap­peared af­ter she got in­to a taxi to be tak­en to her home in Ari­ma.

The 23-year-old’s body was found days lat­er at the Heights of Aripo, Ari­ma.

The two deaths led to an out­pour­ing of pub­lic sup­port and re­in­forced calls for a data­base to be set up for Pri­vate Hire (PH) dri­vers.

Hold­er said their app would en­able com­muters to ver­i­fy the ve­hi­cle is a reg­is­tered taxi even be­fore they en­ter it.

Once the QR code is scanned by the pas­sen­ger us­ing his/her phone - the app will au­to­mat­i­cal­ly no­ti­fy the pas­sen­ger’s emer­gency con­tact as to the ve­hi­cle’s reg­is­tra­tion num­ber; the dri­ver’s iden­ti­ty; the pas­sen­ger’s point of en­try; safe­ty check­points dur­ing the jour­ney; and the ar­rival of the pas­sen­ger at the fi­nal des­ti­na­tion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there is a pan­ic but­ton that the pas­sen­ger can uti­lize with­in the app if he/she feels un­safe at any time dur­ing the jour­ney.

Work­ing with the T&T Taxi Dri­vers Net­work which has ap­prox­i­mate­ly 50 taxi as­so­ci­a­tions cur­rent­ly un­der its belt, Hold­er said there were more than 200 taxis al­ready reg­is­tered with TTWe­Safe.

While the QR codes are free for the first 500 reg­is­tered taxi dri­vers un­der this part­ner­ship, it will cost per­sons there­after, $20.

Hold­er has al­so ap­pealed to the cor­po­rate sec­tor to step up and as­sist in mak­ing this a sus­tain­able ven­ture mov­ing for­ward.

Prais­ing the ini­tia­tive which he claimed would af­ford com­muters a greater sense of pro­tec­tion, pres­i­dent of the T&T Taxi Dri­vers Net­work, Adri­an Acos­ta was high­ly crit­i­cal of PH dri­vers who con­tin­ued to en­joy the same ben­e­fits as reg­is­tered taxi dri­vers but with­out the ex­pense.

He urged Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan to im­ple­ment rec­om­men­da­tions to bet­ter man­age taxi stands across the coun­try.

Acos­ta said, “We al­so want to send a mes­sage that at no point in time, will le­git­i­mate taxi dri­vers sup­port the reg­u­lar­iza­tion or le­gal­i­sa­tion of any PH ve­hi­cle.”

“All of us have gone through a process and any PH dri­ver who wants to work taxi can go through the same process.”