The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The Bahamas Taxi Cab Union’s (BTCU) president yesterday threatened to tell his members to arbitrarily raise their fares by 30 percent despite not having obtained government or Parliament’s approval for such a move.

Wesley Ferguson told Tribune Business he had become frustrated over the lack of progress in negotiations for a fare increase that would offset the impact of high fuel prices for his members. He asserted that JoBeth Coleby-Davis, minister of transport and housing, seemed to be treating the situation “as if the union is supposed to march to her beat. She needs a lesson”.

The minister could not be reached for comment, but Mr Ferguson said: “I want to send her a message that if she doesn’t alert us on what her intentions are as it pertains to this fare rise then I, as the union president, will set my own precedent and instruct the taxi drivers on what they should charge.

“I don’t need the minister to tell the union when they could get a rise or not. We negotiated for 30 percent and we would have settled for 20 percent. But now the whole point is I will tell them to go up by  30 percent.” 

The Government sets taxi fares in the Taxi Cab Act and regulations, and for there to be any change an amendment must be made to the Act via Parliament. It would thus seem that they cannot legally be increased in the manner that Mr Ferguson is suggesting. 

But, arguing that Mrs Coleby-Davis did not consult with the union on the amount of taxi plates her ministry was going to issue when the moratorium was lifted, the taxi union president blasted: “You can’t give those plates out like candy bags at a party and now the union is suffering. We were already on life support.” 

Mr Ferguson said there are now too many taxi plates on the streets. The 200 that the union had requested, he added, was tripled by the Government which ended up issuing nearly 600 and saturated the market. He added that there are now too many plates in the hands of new drivers, leaving the union struggling to help people who use taxi plates to supplement their income. 

“We have the elderly walking in our office every day, asking us to take their plate from them, but we can’t because we have no resources to alleviate their burden and pay them for it,” the union chief said. The BTCU had a practice of using old plates as a revenue stream for itself as well as to assist retirees with making an income.

Mr Ferguson said: “The minister decided to go ahead and tell the people that it is illegal to lease their plates. Then she said that they should come to the union and we should take the plates from them. But when the union takes the plate from someone, we need to pay them for the plate, and the union actually needs to purchase a car and put it on the road so we can hire a driver to drive that particular vehicle.

“So instead of just leasing out the plate, we just give a driver a car to drive for the union where the owner could get paid, the union gets something and the driver can take care of his family. That has not happened, so the union just cannot take over 400 plates with nothing and just decide to have the plates in our storage.” 

Further complicating the situation are legacy issues where taxi plates are part of a person’s estate. The drivers neither own the taxi plates nor the business license for the taxi company, and are just using someone else’s plate to make money. “Any time the Controller of Road Traffic can revoke that plate,” Mr Ferguson said. 

“She [the minister] has not dealt with any of this yet, and all it is is that you can come to her and ask for a taxi plate and you get one, notwithstanding all of the unnecessary plates that are out there that were sold from the Road Traffic Department.”