RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The T&T Taxi Dri­vers Net­work wants Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to re­frain from pri­vatis­ing gas sta­tions and mod­i­fy­ing the fu­el sub­sidy when he presents the 2024 Bud­get on Oc­to­ber 2.

At the press con­fer­ence at Li­brary Cor­ner, San Fer­nan­do, yes­ter­day the group’s pres­i­dent Adri­an Acos­ta said taxi dri­vers have been fac­ing im­mense hard­ships over the past eight years be­cause of ad­just­ments to the fu­el sub­sidy and could not take much more. He added that de­plorable road con­di­tions have been hit­ting mo­torists hard in their pock­ets.

“We have faith that the gov­ern­ment will have good news. We are hear­ing things will get rough be­cause they are look­ing to hand over gas sta­tions to pri­vate own­ers. If that hap­pens, it will bring a great deal of hard­ship,” Acos­ta said.

“For the past eight years we have been un­der the gun. Any oth­er ad­just­ment to the fu­el sub­sidy will bring great pres­sure to cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, not just the trav­el­ling pub­lic.”

He added that Bar­rack­pore and Princes Town taxi dri­vers have been com­plain­ing about high main­te­nance costs and ap­pealed to the gov­ern­ment to ad­dress the press­ing is­sue of road con­di­tions which have sig­nif­i­cant­ly added to mo­torists’ ex­pens­es.

“The price of parts goes up every week. We are ap­peal­ing to the gov­ern­ment to fix the roads,” Acos­ta said.

He al­so called for stricter en­force­ment of reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing Pri­vate Hire (PH) dri­vers: “Long ago, it used to be that they would come out in the evening and now they are on the taxi stand the whole day. I don’t know if PH is le­gal. We are call­ing on law en­force­ment to crack down on this. It’s not against any­body look­ing to earn a dol­lar but we have done all we are sup­posed to do to have a taxi badge.”

Pres­i­dent of the Princes Town to Bar­rack­pore Taxi Dri­vers As­so­ci­a­tion Chan­dra­dath Ram­per­sad com­plained about the state of Pa­pourie Road. He said three con­trac­tors were hired to fix the road, yet it is still in a de­plorable con­di­tion.

Ram­per­sad said he hoped the gov­ern­ment would ad­dress the chal­lenges faced by taxi dri­vers, par­tic­u­lar­ly fu­el sub­si­dies, road con­di­tions, and reg­u­la­to­ry en­force­ment.