The chief spokesman for public service vehicle (PSV) owners has called for renewed oversight and collaboration with the authorities to tackle delinquent behaviour by minibuses and route taxis amid record-high complaints.
Roy Raphael, chairman of the Alliance Owners of Public Transport (AOPT), was responding to comments made by Commissioner of Police Richard Boyce during his Christmas Day message, that police still had concerns about the lack of discipline among PSVs.
The Commissioner said: “The lack of discipline is palpable, and it is a massive inconvenience to the travelling public. We in the service have reviewed our strategies in this area and have concluded that greater enforcement on our part is unlikely to be the only solution. Hence, there is a strong case for greater oversight by the regulatory agencies responsible for licensing these units.”
Stressing his support for measures to bring discipline to the industry, Raphael told Barbados TODAY: “I am not surprised, to be honest with you, hearing from the Commissioner of Police based on the number of calls and comments that we would have seen in the newspaper as it relates to the public transport system in Barbados.
“We are going to make a call to the minister, this time of transport, to step in and have these matters addressed because it is not being addressed by the Transport Authority which refused to meet with the body that represents public service vehicles in Barbados.”
He added that despite the government’s best efforts in bringing new amendments to the law which gave the Transport Authority more power to police PSV operations, enforcement, not policy, continues to be the main factor hampering lasting change in the industry.
“There are regulations on the books to deal with a lot of these issues that keep coming up and confronting the industry,” said Raphael. “There is no need for new legislation to deal with it, but the need is for the authorities to put measures in place to deal with them and bring those persons before the law courts.”
“I think the police spend too much time dealing with these minor issues when really they should be dealing with criminal activity in this country. I think the whole system of transport operations [needs] an overhaul [in] these areas,” the AOPT head added.
Raphael also cautioned that the general public had become frustrated with some of the behaviours exhibited by many PSV operators, with complaints hitting a new high this year despite the changes to the law.
He said: “To this date, we have seen the highest number of complaints on public service vehicles within the last two years, and this is across the board. This is affecting the sector because the way that [some] public service drivers behave, it has a significant impact on those persons who own and operate public service vehicles in this country.”
“We have seen a continuing decrease in persons catching public service vehicles.
Even during Christmas time, we would have expected to see an increased number of travellers on our PSVs [but] we have not seen it. What we have seen is an increase in persons using our taxi operations which we really welcome,” Raphael added. shamarblunt@barbadostody.bb
