Some maxi taxi op­er­a­tors from the Red Band route op­er­at­ing from the San­gre Grande Maxi Hub re­turned to work ear­ly this morn­ing, de­spite a planned three-day protest.

Kuwait briefly shut its main air­port Wednes­day af­ter Iran­ian drones heav­i­ly dam­aged a pas­sen­ger ter­mi­nal build­ing, killed one per­son and wound­ed dozens — the lat­est in back-and-forth at­tacks by Tehran and Wash­ing­ton that have test­ed a frag­ile cease­fire.

Raúl Cas­tro turned 95 on Wednes­day, a land­mark birth­day for a man still help­ing lead one of the last com­mu­nist coun­tries in the world.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says her Gov­ern­ment will not back down from reg­u­la­tions re­strict­ing ac­cess to 15 no-protest zones across Trinidad and To­ba­go, de­spite threats of le­gal ac­tion from a coali­tion of trade unions.

Even as strike ac­tion for Route Two Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion mem­bers en­tered its sec­ond day yes­ter­day, sev­er­al dri­vers re­turned to the streets con­duct­ing busi­ness as usu­al.

While maxi taxi op­er­a­tors in South Trinidad say they sup­port the con­cerns raised by dri­vers par­tic­i­pat­ing in the na­tion­wide shut­down over out­stand­ing Gov­ern­ment pay­ments, il­le­gal com­pe­ti­tion and speed lim­it reg­u­la­tions, many have cho­sen to re­main on the road, say­ing they can­not af­ford to lose a day’s earn­ings.

Thir­teen trade unions, call­ing them­selves the Pro­gres­sive In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions, are now threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion against the Gov­ern­ment over the State of Emer­gency (SOE) reg­u­la­tions that re­strict pub­lic protests at 15 des­ig­nat­ed lo­ca­tions na­tion­wide. The unions warn that the mea­sures un­der­mine con­sti­tu­tion­al free­doms and se­vere­ly lim­it tra­di­tion­al labour rights.

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has pledged that her Gov­ern­ment will as­sist maxi taxi dri­vers “in any way pos­si­ble” as she de­scribed them as de­cent, hard­work­ing cit­i­zens with le­git­i­mate griev­ances.

The call for a na­tion­wide shut­down on Fri­day con­tin­ues and ac­cord­ing to so­cial ac­tivist and or­gan­is­er Alyssa Phillip, it is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for cit­i­zens to let their voic­es be heard in a peace­ful man­ner.

Maxi taxi op­er­a­tors say the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to open the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route (PBR) to mo­torists dur­ing the on­go­ing trans­port dis­rup­tion has cre­at­ed se­vere con­ges­tion. Videos on so­cial me­dia yes­ter­day showed stand­still traf­fic near Arou­ca.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials ap­pear to be at odds over re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for is­sues raised by maxi taxi op­er­a­tors dur­ing this week’s in­dus­tri­al ac­tion.

For many com­muters this week, get­ting to work, school or prob­a­bly try­ing to make it to an ap­point­ment on time has be­come a re­al chal­lenge, as maxi taxi op­er­a­tors take in­dus­tri­al ac­tion across Trinidad.