Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

In re­sponse to warn­ings from school maxi taxi op­er­a­tors that ser­vices could be sus­pend­ed from Mon­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath as­sured that dri­vers are re­ceiv­ing pay­ments.

For the sec­ond time in eight days, dri­vers made a pub­lic ap­peal to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and oth­er au­thor­i­ties to pay them their out­stand­ing monies.

Over 100 dri­vers op­er­at­ing un­der the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion pro­vide free trans­port to school chil­dren un­der the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s school trans­port pro­gramme. How­ev­er, they com­plained that for eight months—or 12 fort­nights—they have re­ceived no pay­ments.

De­spite the fi­nan­cial strain, dri­vers, who gath­ered at King’s Wharf in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day, said that they con­tin­ued to pro­vide what they de­scribe as a safe and re­li­able ser­vice to stu­dents na­tion­wide.

The dri­vers, how­ev­er, warned that the sit­u­a­tion has now be­come un­sus­tain­able, where they are strug­gling to even put food on their ta­ble.

Sav­it­ri Ben­ny, who has pro­vid­ed the ser­vice for 23 years, said the cri­sis has tak­en a se­vere toll on dri­vers and their fam­i­lies.

Even with­out pay, she said, they du­ti­ful­ly trans­port chil­dren to school.

To the au­thor­i­ties, she said, “You to­tal­ly dis­re­spect us be­cause while you and your fam­i­ly were eat­ing ham and jam, we don’t have wa­ter on our ta­ble and think about that. You think about the things that we are go­ing through.”

An­oth­er dri­ver, Du­ane Blades, ques­tioned why the au­thor­i­ties have not reached out to them to rec­ti­fy this is­sue, as they pro­vide an es­sen­tial ser­vice.

“Most of us will talk about the bus­es, but most of us have our fam­i­ly lives that we have to main­tain, and we don’t pay bills every three months or every four months. The banks that we owe don’t want to hear that they mon­ey short.”

He said their sit­u­a­tion is ter­ri­ble.

An­oth­er dri­ver, Dereck Rus­sell, agreed that dri­vers have reached their break­ing point.

“With no mon­ey, we can­not go to the gas sta­tion for fu­el to con­tin­ue ser­vice. It’s ob­vi­ous dri­vers will no longer be able to come out to work come Mon­day.”

The dri­vers, how­ev­er, said they were not will­ing to ac­cept on­ly one pay­ment, as that would be in­suf­fi­cient to meet their out­stand­ing fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments.

In re­sponse to a ques­tion posed by St Ann’s East MP Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly hours lat­er in Par­lia­ment on the mat­ter, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath said from May 2025 to present, $11,972,593 have been paid to the maxi taxis, and the cur­rent out­stand­ing amount is $10,796,194.

Dur­ing the past week, he said three tranch­es to­talling $4.1 mil­lion have been dis­bursed to PTSC to en­sure the maxi taxi op­er­a­tors are paid.

The min­is­ter said the last pay­ment was made on Thurs­day.

He added that a meet­ing has been set for Feb­ru­ary 4 with PTSC to en­sure a smooth sys­tem of pay­ments to maxi-taxi dri­vers.

In a press re­lease, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry said it is work­ing close­ly with the Min­istry of Fi­nance, the Min­istry of Trans­port and Civ­il Avi­a­tion, and the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) to ex­pe­dite the res­o­lu­tion of out­stand­ing pay­ments.