The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

TOURISTS who accused a taxi driver of defrauding them in a viral video never made a complaint to the police about the incident.

Inspector McKell Pinder said the driver –– who released a voice note defending himself –– was questioned, but the investigation cannot proceed without an official complaint.

Her comment came after Transport Minister Jobeth Coleby-Davis said her ministry was aware of a video of a tourist accusing a local taxi driver of taking her family’s money and leaving them stranded at the beach.

The woman discussed her encounter with a taxi driver identified as “Cousin Clarence“.

“We paid $30 a person for 18 people to drive us around for the day,” she said in a video. “He said he would take us anywhere we wanted to go for the day. We went to the Queen’s staircase and then he drove us to Junkanoo Beach, where he said he would be back at 3 o’clock to pick us up and never came back to get us.”

“He said we could leave our belongings in his vehicle, and my daughter left her bag with her necklace and her bracelet, which we had just bought from the market by the Queen’s staircase and her sea card to get back on the ship and then he never came back to get us. We had to pay another $70 in taxis to get back to the port.”

 The driver, however, claimed he only left the people after they failed to return as scheduled.

 “I had these people today on a tour,” he said in a voice note. “It was 18 of them for $30 a person. I been to the fort almost an hour with these people. I must carry them to the beach, come back for them like 3’oclock.”

 He said when the people failed to arrive on time, he left.

 He said they left nothing on his bus.

 “I don’t want nobody think I obligated to stay there and wait until they decide they want to come back,” he said. “That’s not how it work. I running a business.”

 However, Wesley Ferguson, president of the Bahamas Taxicab Union, said he was not surprised by the incident.

 “I went on record and said the influx of the new taxi drivers, untrained, ungazetted and unregulated, this was going to happen,” he said.

 “When you have a sudden uptick in competition, it causes good drivers to turn bad because the competition is now fierce.”

 He said incidents of potential fraud could be minimised if the government implemented a code of conduct for taxi drivers.

 “There are a bunch of improprieties in this taxi industry right now,” he said, “and we are still awaiting the minister to roll out and to implement this new code of conduct that we announced. This would go a long way in assisting the police and the road traffic supervisor along with the controller and the ministry and the union to basically curtail or to mitigate this kind of behaviour in the future.”

 “In the absence of consequences, when there’s no enforcement, the industry is in trouble so you have to have a disciplinary board that acts and acts decisively with due diligence, do their investigations and make sure they’re not taking advantage of the taxi drivers.”