– after President meets with service operators
A large contingent of representatives from taxi associations in Guyana yesterday met President Bharrat Jagdeo and Ministers of Tourism Industry and Commerce Manniram Prashad and Home Affairs Clement Rohee to continue discussions on the agreed yellow code as the deadline draws near. The meeting held in the Cabinet room at the Office of the President was a follow-up to a previous one in November last year at the Guyana International Conference Centre (GICC), where President Jagdeo outlined Government’s intention to have all motor vehicles plying the hire car trade painted the same colour by August this year.
At that meeting, a number of proposals were discussed including installation of meters to determine mileage and cost, uniform, installation of flex glass, no passengers in the front seat, installation of the service’s official logo and repainting all taxis in one common colour.
At yesterday’s meeting, however, President Jagdeo extended the deadline for the colour code to September at which time another meeting with the stakeholders will be held to discuss the benefits to be derived from the initiative.
During the meeting the taxi service association presented a document to the President which contained the views of taxi owners on the colour code initiative.
Speaking to the Government Information Agency (GINA) after the meeting, President of the Taxi Service Association, Patrick Brassington, said that President Jagdeo firmly related his conviction to have taxis coded in yellow as many operators conveyed their concerns about the difficulty in acquiring financing to have their vehicles painted.
Brassington reiterated that the colour code only applies to taxi services or any hire car owner attached to taxi services, and expressed the view that the intervention is the way forward.
Since the proposal was made at last year’s meeting, Brassington noted that there has been some level of misunderstanding in the public domain about the compliance criteria and explained that his association visited a number of taxi service owners, particularly on the East Coast of Demerara, and explained to them the objective.
Only recently the Ministry of Home Affairs announced that the agreed colour, corporate yellow, applies only to taxi services and taxis associated with a service, and not to owners of personal hire cars, minibuses, and Tapirs that are being used for public transportation.
Owners of taxi services were advised that a waiver of fees for revenue licences, road service licences, certificate of fitness and radio spectrum will be granted for a two-year period; but the waiver is conditional to the fulfillment of the usual requirements by the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) and the Guyana Police Force (GPF). (GINA)