Over seven hundred taxi and livery plates on New Providence and Grand Bahama have been deemed inactive following an audit conducted by the Road Traffic Department.

President of the Bahamas Taxi Cab Union, Tyrone Butler told ZNS News this process should have been done a long time ago. He said, “before issuing those new plates they should have purged the system then. Some of these plates could have been on the road without giving out some of the new plates. It seems to me that this government, and I’m convinced, they’re very hostile and they’re very angry with taxi drivers. They don’t seem to have taxi drivers best interest at heart.”

Minister of Transport and Energy, the Hon. Jobeth Coleby-Davis was asked about the issue outside of the House Of Assembly on Wednesday. She said part of the audit carried out is to notify that the plates are inactive.

The Minister also said the audit process can make room for those who want to enter the industry. “Cleaning up the inactive plates helps us to be able to address some of where we see areas of a potential shortfall in our finance, revenue intake at Road Traffic. It’s sometimes skewed because they’re calculating based on what they see listed as plates in issuance but many of them are actually inactive. So it’s not that we’re not collecting the revenue it’s just that the plates aren’t actually being utilized,” Coleby-Davis said.

The inactive plates are set to be recalled on November 30th by the Road Traffic Department.