Safety in Public Transportation in Arima, Trinidad

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What’s it like to be a taxi driver in Arima today? 

I often felt scared when I had to commute alone at night. After 6:30 p.m., most ‘H’ cars (registered taxis) stop working and are replaced by ‘P’ cars (personal and unregistered cars), which makes it more difficult to find a trustworthy ride. My friends or relatives would usually call and stay on the phone with me until I got a car. I felt safer having someone on the other end of the line. I had to keep a serious face and often adjusted my gestures and body language to appear less vulnerable. Sometimes I even carried sharp objects with me in case there were threats to my safety. There have been visible increases in crime - petty and violent - in Trinidad over the past few years. Combined with the limited public transportation, drivers and passengers alike face more and more unsafe conditions while traveling around daily. For my mini-ethnography in Caribbean Anthropology, I wanted to focus on taxi drivers’ everyday experiences of driving at present. Most drivers do not work after sunset especially because, recently, a taxi driver’s car was stolen at night by someone pretending to be a passenger. Robbery, petty theft, car theft and bodily harm were some of the threats that concerned taxi drivers in Arima along the popular ‘East-West corridor’ in north Trinidad. The ever-present fear among taxi drivers does not deter them from working, but it certainly molds their interactions, work times, and sense of personal safety.

By Amerie Balgobin

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