NASSAU, BAHAMAS — Bahamas Taxi Cab Union (BTCU) President Wesley Ferguson yesterday called on the government to take decisive action over its long-standing concerns as the union has passed the point of negotiation, despite Labor Minister Dion Foulkes suggesting that the issues were being actively addressed.
Foulkes told reporters ahead of a Cabinet meeting yesterday: “I had a very productive talk with the president of the taxi cab union yesterday. The union manages about 40 franchise plates on behalf of their retired members. There was some issue with the renewal of those plates.
“I have since had discussions with the controller of [the] Road Traffic [Department], Mr Bradley Sands, and that issue has since been resolved. He (Mr Ferguson) is invited to go down to road traffic and to see Mr Sands and that matter will be settled.”
Foulkes added: “One of the vexing issues is the leasing of taxi plates. We have had many taxi drivers paying weekly and monthly rents on these plates for years and, in some cases, decades.
“The union has given a list of who those drivers are. Mr Wells did a lot of consultation on this issue and the Cabinet gave consideration to it. Unfortunately, the pandemic interfered with that process.
“There was a point where all the taxi cabs were parked and all the jitneys were parked. There just wasn’t any business out there. I have made an undertaking to the president of the union that we will begin the review again and that consultation again so we can finally bring an end to this unfair practice of having taxi drivers lease plates for their livelihoods.”
BTCU President Ferguson told Eyewitness News yesterday that the union’s planned demonstration will go ahead this morning as its issue remain unresolved.
“We had a telephone conversation with the minister during which he was trying to persuade me not to go ahead with the demonstration,” said Ferguson.
“I told him that was not going to happen. I told him we were coming to town because there was no resolution to our issues. He wanted me to meet with Brad Sands, which I was not interested in doing. The issues between Brad Sands and taxi drivers are long-standing. I’m not talking about one complaint.
“We have been negotiating with the government since October 2018 about the issuance of taxi plates and the issue of changing taxi plate colors. In mid-November 2019, the moratorium was lifted and to this date we have not seen a taxi plate issued to a taxi driver and the color of the taxi plates is still the same as an SD.”
He added: “We have passed the negotiation stage. This is time for the government to be decisive on when the taxi plates will be issued and when the colors will be changed.
“Our advice to the government is to do it before this license period, which ends in May. That will be the last sensible time the government will have to facilitate us because next year is an election, if it is not called early.”
On the license plate color issue, Foulkes told reporters: “Both the SD and the taxi cab have the same color license plate. We have been reviewing it. My predecessors, Mr [Renward] Wells and Mr [Frankie] Campbell, have both been looking at this issue. The question is do we change the taxi plates to another color or self-drive plates.
“I think the consensus is we make the self-drive plate a white color so it will be a clear difference between the taxi plates and self-drive plates. I have asked the controller to give me an idea of how much it would cost in terms of the transfer. We are doing an active review on that and will seek Cabinet approval to change the color.”
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