There are about 2,000 taxi operators in the city, that number includes dollar vans and the inner city buses. That is A LOT of green plates on the streets and Mayor Bradley and his councillors have been working for years to cut that number down. One of the council’s approaches was a 2012 taxi license moratorium. Well after 6 months of consultation with the taxi operators, the city council has decided to finally lift the moratorium under specific conditions. Mayor Bradley outlined those conditions at a Battlefield Park press briefing this afternoon.
Darrell Bradley - Belize City, Mayor
"We don’t want the city to be flooded with taxi operators so that we are giving a commitment that we will not issue a taxi license unless a person is a bonafide member of a union and they come with a recommendation but we are also asking that union presidents and union members: 1. You hold us accountable to that so if you see someone with a new plate and you see them out and about driving about, then you ask “Mr. Mayor how did he get his license?†And then you yourself are discriminating. You don’t allow any and everybody, I like how Mr. Robinson put it you want people of a certain calibre, people who are reliable, people who really chose to make this their livelihood, people who have a vested interested in ensuring that taxi operators have a good reputation."
"The union provides recognition, a union provides order and structure, a union provides quality assurance, I am looking here right now and I am seeing several members of various taxi unions in their very nicely decorated shirts so it is that type of culture and spirit that we would want to encourage."
"I would ask that you recognize the importance of that power because a union cannot go from 30 to 300, that means that the rates will be affected, that means that the taxi operation service will be affected, if I have 10 properly serviced vehicles and 10 professional drivers then all 10 of those people can make money, if I have 200 vehicles then you will have a system whereby everybody is under cutting one another, no one is respecting the space that has been allocated and you have a disorderly."
So as you heard, if you want to run a taxi in the city, you have to be a part of a cooperative and you have to be recommended by the president. There are about 18 taxi unions in the city. Your vehicle will also have to be in good or road worthy condition. Now, while this seems like a more orderly system, not everyone will want to join a cooperative, besides, many of them have been operating just fine without any rules or regulations. So what happens with them? Councillor Bernard Pitts Jr. told us that they will try to accommodate them in this new system.
Bernard Pitts - Councillor
"During our consultations we must come up with something to encompass them or assist them as well because they are faced with the same problem as you guys, they want space, so it has to be dialogue that we take and we must have a collective effort in it, everybody who runs a taxi, runs it for a purpose to make a living so we really don’t want to misplace anybody of that sort with respect to their livelihood so it is something we must take into consideration as well and in the end, as I said before, our traffic manager has deployed our officers to do checks with respect to the taxi stands and the operations to ensure all the rules and regulations in respect spacing and so on are adhered to."
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