As the next general election looms, president of the People’s National Party and Opposition Leader Mark Golding took his campaign to taxi operators in Cross Roads, St Andrew, on Monday.

Golding told the taxi operators that the PNP sees them as business people who have invested their money and capital as they seek to make a livelihood from their investment.

According to Golding, the taxi owners and operators are very much valued as they provide a vital service to the society and without them there would be no economy.

“The economy is critical to the society in which we live. You, the operators, are an essential part of Jamaica’s economy and society and what we really need is a framework that is based on principles of mutual co-existence of an orderly system of transportation that allows the Jamaican people to be transported safely and in dignity and in conditions that are conducive to them in the workplace and when they get home they feel that they have had a good day’s work and they got home safely,” Golding said.

“We also want a system where the operators feel valued, respected, and also understand the importance of playing within the rules of the system. Transportation is a serious business. People’s lives are at stake and we can’t have chaos in the system. It doesn’t suit anybody to have a system based on lawlessness or in a generally chaotic atmosphere of operations,” Golding added.

In the meantime, Egeton Newman, president of the Transport Operators Development Sustainable Services (TODSS), said the meeting with PNP top brass was a very important one.

Newman said this gave taxi operators the opportunity to throw questions at members of the PNP in case they take the reins of Government when the votes are counted in the general election.

According to Newman, among the issues bothering members of the private transport sector is the relatively new Road Traffic Act.

“We believe that the PNP has some good ideas. A reasoning with the senior executive of the PNP is important to us as operators and that is why I summoned them to this meeting this afternoon. Over the past two years, we have never had so many taxi men going behind bars since the introduction of the new Road Traffic Act. There are many flaws in the Act and we need a sit down.

“One of my deputies told me that it could be as much as over 800 [taxi] operators who have been behind bars for issues. Some of them paid their tickets two to three times already and warrants still come for them to pay it again. They have to try and afford the $3,000, $4,000 or $5,000 or they lose their licence for six months, one year or two years.

“If it continues in this fashion, come December of this year you will have close to 2,400 operators not being able to drive a taxi or a bus again because they don’t have any licence to do so,” Newman added.