CORPORATE Area taxi operators will meet this afternoon at the Gaynstead High School in Kingston to discuss plans by the state-run Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) to take back sub-franchise routes from minibuses and taxis.

The taximen, represented by the East Central Taxi Route Association and the Jamaica Transport Operators Service, vowed yesterday that they would not be giving back the routes without a fight.

2,500 legal minibus and taxi operators would be affected

".We warn that it will be hell and powderhouse, a war we vow not to lose," said the taxi operators in a statement yesterday by general-secretary of the Jamaica Transport Operators Service, Lloyd Buchanan.

Buchanan, in an later interview, said the JUTC needs to sit down and talk to the sub-franchise operators as they cannot afford to have their livelihood taken from them "with just one strike", given the harsh economic times being experienced by Jamaicans all over. Some 2,500 legal minibus and taxi operators would be affected if the JUTC takes back the sub-franchised routes.

JUTC Chairman Robin Levy told a luncheon meeting of the Rotary Club of Downtown Wednesday that some sub-franchise operators would not have their licences renewed next year as the bus company would be taking back some of the routes.

He told the Observer that some of these vehicles would either be taken off the Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region (KMTR) routes or restricted to certain areas by the beginning of the next fiscal year when their licences expire.

This, he said, will mean "more control over JUTC routes, more buses under the control of the JUTC and less franchise holders - less taxis and less minibuses".

Levy said the move had become necessary because the bus company was only recovering 65 per cent of its operating expense, which he blamed on "intense competition" from illegal operators as well as legal operators who were operating contrary to their road licences.

But yesterday Buchanan said that the JUTC cannot cope with the present passenger load in the KMTR. That, he insisted, was the very reason why the routes were licensed to sub-franchise operators in the first place.

"What the JUTC is doing is wrong and they need to sit down and talk to the other transport operators. They are behaving like dictators," Buchanan told the Observer.

The transport operators, in the meantime, urged the transport minister, Mike Henry, to rein in the new board of the JUTC, which they alleged was "bent on carrying out the high-handed plan of the former board, whose aim was to change the existing order without input from the operators within the system".

The transport operators, in their statement, also accused the Government and the JUTC of lacking interest in the survival of small business people in Jamaica.

".(They) seem bent on disrupting the lives of thousands of legitimate taxi and bus operators in the KMTR," said the statement.

The KMTR includes routes in Kingston and St Andrew, as well as Spanish Town and Portmore, both in St Catherine.

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