The Route 2 Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion says it is trou­bled by con­di­tions at the San­gre Grande Maxi Hub on Brier­ley Street, San­gre Grande. As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Bren­ton Knight claims no one seems con­cerned about the dri­vers who use the hub and by ex­ten­sion the com­muters.

Speak­ing to re­porters dur­ing a news con­fer­ence at the hub at 6 am to high­light the is­sues, Knight said among the ma­jor prob­lems are a lack of se­cu­ri­ty, in­ad­e­quate light­ing in the build­ing and the com­pound, no toi­let fa­cil­i­ties, no ac­cess to pipe-borne wa­ter, un­kept drains breed­ing mos­qui­toes, in­suf­fi­cient and un­san­i­tary seat­ing, and in­ad­e­quate shel­ter. He said when it rains, com­muters get wet and are forced to hud­dle un­der a small cov­ered stand.

Knight asked, “The Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, Ro­han Sinanan, who has held this po­si­tion for the past sev­en years, was al­lo­cat­ed $10 bil­lion. And yet, this is the con­di­tion of the hub?”

He said he has a long-stand­ing and good re­la­tion­ship with the min­is­ter and not­ed that Sinanan is a mem­ber of the San­gre Grande com­mu­ni­ty.

Knight said, “I have choice words but will use the words of a for­mer prime min­is­ter—it is in­sult­ing to the mem­bers of the Route 2 Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion, in­sult­ing to the com­mu­ni­ty of San­gre Grande, and to the com­muters who trav­el all the way to Port-of-Spain. It is even an in­sult­ing per­for­mance com­ing out of the Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port. You had a $10 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion.”

He added, “You could not have bought a gal­lon of paint or a paint­brush to do some re­fur­bish­ing work on the hub? Dri­vers do not even have ac­cess to toi­let fa­cil­i­ties, and there is no run­ning wa­ter.”

Parasan Ram­per­sad, care­tak­er of the San­gre Grande Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion, said for two decades, un­san­i­tary con­di­tions have ex­ist­ed at the hub as there is no wash­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

“We have dri­vers work­ing from the ear­ly hours of the morn­ing, and there is ab­solute­ly no ac­cess to wash­rooms. School chil­dren who need to use the wash­room be­fore mak­ing the long jour­ney to Port-of-Spain are un­able to do so,” Ram­per­sad said.

He al­so claimed mo­torists use the hub as a park­ing lot.

“No one, no dri­ver, re­spects law and or­der in­side the hub, and the maxi op­er­a­tors are treat­ed as though they are squat­ting here, and that is how it looks now,” he said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment on the is­sue yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan said there is no agree­ment with his min­istry to main­tain the fa­cil­i­ty where the maxi taxis are lo­cat­ed.

“Where they are lo­cat­ed in San­gre Grande, the Min­istry of Works has noth­ing to do with that. They were put there by the cor­po­ra­tion (San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion) a long time ago; the land be­longs to Trinidad Rail­way,” he said.

Notwith­stand­ing this, Min­is­ter Sinanan said there are two pieces of leg­is­la­tion cur­rent­ly be­fore the Cab­i­net, a pol­i­cy for maxi taxis and the Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion Plan, in which a ma­jor part will be how maxi taxis are dealt with na­tion­al­ly.

He is hop­ing to have a frame­work ap­proved by this week.