The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

Taxi drivers have seen an 80 percent fall in business as they enter the traditionally slow September period, their union head said yesterday, adding that COVID testing and changed protocols are also to blame.

Wesley Ferguson, the Bahamas Taxi Cab Union’s (BTCU) president, told Tribune Business that while drivers last month transported some 5,000 visitors on a single day they are back down to averaging 1,000 per day.

And he revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic is taking a heavy toll on the taxi industry as 25 drivers have died from the virus over the past 12 months, putting the industry in fear. Mr Ferguson said: “We lost about 25 drivers last year, dead due to COVID-19.

“During the first and second wave we didn’t have any casualties, but when this third wave hit, everybody just started checking out. I have two or three funerals every week, with guys I know and have seen behind the wheel of a taxicab.”

Asked whether The Bahamas’ downgrade to “don’t travel” status by the US health authorities was having an impact, Mr Ferguson said: “We were hoping that because the US economy was on lockdown for so long that people would have just been eager to travel and we would not have experienced a September, October, November slow period.”

He added, through, that continually shifting Bahamian health protocols, together with reintroduced mandatory testing even for fully vaccinated travellers, was having an impact “along with this advisory that you have to quarantine the children for 14 days.

“You have one or two people who I know who have cancelled because they said they are only going to be here for four days, so they can’t have the children quarantined for 15 days if they are only here for four,” he added.

The period from early September to the Thanksgiving holiday at end-November is the traditionally slow period for tourism due to it coinciding with the peak of hurricane season and children going back to school.