The National Association of Taxi operators is threatening to lock down the island’s taxi service if a request made to the Transport Authority for outstanding route licences are not met.

“This lockdown of the public transport system may not be immediate, but if our request is not met, we ask the country to brace itself for some action,” said Edgerton Newman, the taxi association’s general secretary.

Newman, speaking to reporters in Kingston yesterday, said several taxi operators have had their insurance policies lapsed and their vehicles seized by the police because of the failure of the Transport Authority to issue outstanding route licences.

“We want the Transport Authority to deliver the thousands of license outstanding for taxi operators for well over three months now,” Newman said. “We will not stand by and watch our members suffer. We pledge to serve them and we are going to do so,” he added.

At the same time, Collin Manning, the association’s president, told the Observer that the time for processing of applications was a long drawn-out process that needed to be revised.

However, the Transport Authority’s communications and customer service manager Petra Kene Williams said the authority has been diligent in processing all applications it has received.

The Transport Authority, she said, has received more than 300 applications from taxi operators who want to change from hackney carriage to route taxi operators.

“The authority’s refusal was on the basis that this would result in the over saturation of these routes and further congestion in Spanish Town,” Williams said.

Said Williams: “Add the additional 300 taxis that would terminate in the town and you will find chaos. Where will they go to terminate?”

But Manning said that most of the taxi that service routes like Sligoville and Point Hill in St Catherine were in need of the route licence to operate or risk having their cars seized by the police.

Meantime, the taxi association said it would also be seeking the transport ministry’s intervention in dealing with its grouse.

“If our demands are not met in a timely fashion, we will ask Minister Bobby Pickersgill to intervene, or we may just take the matter to the prime minister,” said Newman.