Taxi Industry
Posted Tuesday, 19 January 2010 By Kim Swan
The New Year arrives and the first pronouncement by Premier Brown is an offensive against taxi operators with the threat of $1,400-a-day fines and airport bans over GPS requirements.
Rather than working with the industry in supportive and constructive ways, and ensuring that our tourism ambassadors are doing as well as they can in difficult economic circumstances, he has launched a full-scale assault.
The Premier’s action is punitive, divisive and counter-productive.
And it is taken without any apparent understanding that his poor leadership of tourism that has created an unnecessarily difficult environment in which drivers must operate.
Let’s take a closer look at a few tourism statistics during the era of Minister Ewart Brown:
In the first three quarters of 2009, visitors spent $55 million less than they did during the same period in 2008, which itself was not a good year.
In the first three quarters of 2009, Bermuda hosted 100,000 fewer air visitors than during the same period in 1998.
Bermuda desperately needs a new Minister of Tourism and not one who is focused on grudges, failed policies and wasteful marketing initiatives.
We need a fresh look at an industry desperately in need of help. We do not think Dr. Brown as Minister is up to it. We see his attack on taxi operators – an attack undertaken in his capacity as Transport Minister – as being just what the tourism industry does not need.
We need someone as Transport Minister who is capable of having a healthy working relationship with an industry and the people of that industry.
A good working relationship between the industry and government is essential. We certainly don’t need one based on fear, intimidation and arrogance, which is what the Premier has brought to the table.
There needs to be a real partnership in these challenging times – a partnership that works with understanding toward acceptable solutions.
The taxi industry also needs to speak with one voice and if the dispatching companies are not holding up their end of agreement then that needs to be addressed instead of this targeting individual drivers.
By Kim Swan, United Bermuda Party Leader
January 18, 2010
Rather than working with the industry in supportive and constructive ways, and ensuring that our tourism ambassadors are doing as well as they can in difficult economic circumstances, he has launched a full-scale assault.
The Premier’s action is punitive, divisive and counter-productive.
And it is taken without any apparent understanding that his poor leadership of tourism that has created an unnecessarily difficult environment in which drivers must operate.
Let’s take a closer look at a few tourism statistics during the era of Minister Ewart Brown:
In the first three quarters of 2009, visitors spent $55 million less than they did during the same period in 2008, which itself was not a good year.
In the first three quarters of 2009, Bermuda hosted 100,000 fewer air visitors than during the same period in 1998.
Bermuda desperately needs a new Minister of Tourism and not one who is focused on grudges, failed policies and wasteful marketing initiatives.
We need a fresh look at an industry desperately in need of help. We do not think Dr. Brown as Minister is up to it. We see his attack on taxi operators – an attack undertaken in his capacity as Transport Minister – as being just what the tourism industry does not need.
We need someone as Transport Minister who is capable of having a healthy working relationship with an industry and the people of that industry.
A good working relationship between the industry and government is essential. We certainly don’t need one based on fear, intimidation and arrogance, which is what the Premier has brought to the table.
There needs to be a real partnership in these challenging times – a partnership that works with understanding toward acceptable solutions.
The taxi industry also needs to speak with one voice and if the dispatching companies are not holding up their end of agreement then that needs to be addressed instead of this targeting individual drivers.
By Kim Swan, United Bermuda Party Leader
January 18, 2010
