Letter of the Day | I do not blame the taxi man

THE EDITOR, Sir:

I agree that taxi men drive bad, break out of the line, run traffic lights and do all manner of dangerous activities on the road. We also hear that they gather a lot of tickets with these nefarious activities.

So, who writes them these tickets? We all agree that by law, only a police officer can give a ticket. What happens to that ticket? Somehow, it should end up in the courts. The ticket has a court date if you miss the deadline for payment, and that suggests that somehow, the court management system gets its records from the ticket.

I recently got a ticket for not wearing my seat belt and one of the things I noticed when I went to court was the lack of a proper management information system. I gave the lady at the window my ticket and she searched through some files and later confirmed that my ticket was in play. However, it seemed to me that she used my own ticket to start the court proceedings. They did not necessarily have any record of my ticket or they would have announced who should be in attendance beforehand. I should have been able to go to the court and see a printed list with my name on it. That is what information systems do.

OK. Let us go back to the police officer who issued the ticket. Now, any sensible system would have allowed that police officer to either call in or text in the vehicle information or driver information to discern whether the person he or she is ticketing has prior tickets and warrants. Well, you could say the police is in on it because the cop just never bothered to write anything because SOMETHING was left with him or her. Now that brings into question why the bodycam system is not yet in place to monitor these activities.

We have had these amnesties and calls for amnesties before but I do not blame the taxi man. I blame a system and Government that constantly fail to deliver for the man and woman in the street.

Aren’t these transport operators the same ones who are used by the political directorate to carry people to vote each election cycle? Now, with the Government saying that they will not budge on this amnesty, I wonder whether these taxi men will have good memories when these same leaders come to them to carry people to vote? Or will they just tek the pay and move on?

MARK TROUGHT