An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion Min­is­ter Eli Za­k­our yes­ter­day de­clined to com­ment on the on­go­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the var­i­ous maxi taxi routes as day two of the maxi taxi strike con­tin­ued.

Za­k­our, how­ev­er, de­scribed Mon­day’s meet­ing with of­fi­cials as cor­dial.

Speak­ing with re­porters at City Gate around 3 pm yes­ter­day, Za­k­our said he was present to en­sure com­muters got home safe­ly.

He al­so not­ed that some maxi taxis con­tin­ued op­er­at­ing along Route One and Route Three, but said this ap­peared to be a per­son­al de­ci­sion by op­er­a­tors.

“I can’t say if it stemmed from the meet­ing yes­ter­day (Mon­day),” he said.

As the in­dus­tri­al ac­tion con­tin­ued, ad­di­tion­al arms of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty joined ef­forts to pro­vide free trans­port to com­muters. How­ev­er, some mem­bers of the pub­lic crit­i­cised the ini­tia­tive, de­scrib­ing it as a “pub­lic­i­ty stunt.”

Com­muters at City Gate com­plained of long wait­ing times as they queued for trans­port to ar­eas in­clud­ing Ed­in­burgh, Ch­agua­nas.

One man, who de­clined to be iden­ti­fied, al­leged that a PTSC bus had been waved off ear­li­er de­spite pas­sen­gers be­ing present, say­ing, “They just do­ing this for points.”

That claim was lat­er dis­missed by PTSC gen­er­al man­ag­er, re­tired lieu­tenant colonel Patrick Gomez, who said of­fi­cials were con­tin­u­ous­ly as­sess­ing crowd lev­els and, where pos­si­ble, merg­ing trips to im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy.

Gomez said the ini­tia­tive, which he not­ed was ini­tial­ly sug­gest­ed by the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro, had gone well on Mon­day.

He said mem­bers of the pub­lic had re­spond­ed pos­i­tive­ly to the col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween PTSC and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies.

He con­firmed that the ex­pand­ed trans­port arrange­ment in­clud­ed one ve­hi­cle from the Of­fice of the Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM); two from the T&T Fire Ser­vices (TTFS); sev­en from the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF); and five from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro re­ject­ed sug­ges­tions that the ini­tia­tive could be con­sid­ered “scab labour,” say­ing he was sur­prised by the char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion, em­pha­sis­ing that the fo­cus re­mained pub­lic safe­ty.

“I am most sur­prised that any­one can ac­tu­al­ly look at such an en­deav­our as be­ing scab labour. This is the TTPS and oth­er law en­force­ment agen­cies reach­ing out with ca­pac­i­ty to treat with a prob­lem that has arisen,” he said.

Gue­var­ro said the pri­or­i­ty was en­sur­ing com­muters, in­clud­ing school­child­ren, the el­der­ly and per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, were not left strand­ed.

He al­so wel­comed the ad­di­tion­al maxi taxis that had joined the trans­port ef­fort.

Gomez al­so said pay­ments had been made to some con­tract­ed dri­vers re­spon­si­ble for trans­port­ing school­child­ren who were owed monies.

He de­clined to com­ment on whether the strike had been ef­fec­tive over its first two days but said op­er­a­tions had been close­ly mon­i­tored.

On the is­sue of pri­vate hire dri­vers op­er­at­ing dur­ing the dis­rup­tion, Gue­var­ro warned that il­le­gal “pulling bull” re­mained an of­fence.

“Pulling bull is still il­le­gal in T&T. So my views on it is that I could nev­er sup­port any­one break­ing any of the laws of T&T, but at this point in time, it is a sit­u­a­tion we will have to ex­am­ine and per­haps go back to the pol­i­cy and law­mak­ers to de­ter­mine how we can pos­si­bly ad­dress it,” he said.