By Michron Robinson on Tuesday, 28 September, 2021 at 11:55 AM

With the island peaking at over 180 cases of new COVID-19 infections as of last Sunday there is a concern that not enough PSV drivers are going forward to be vaccinated.

Chairman of the Alliance Owner of Public Transport (AOPT) and Chairman of the Regional Transport Association Roy Raphael said that he believes this slow uptake may be due to the hectic schedule of drivers.

“I am thinking it is about [a lack of] education and those vaccination centres are not accessible. If a guy doesn’t come off because he wants to make a lot of money he is not going to come off to spend two hours in the vaccination centre.”

Raphael said that the pop-up centres need to have readjusted times or health care professionals may have to go into the terminals.

“Having them come off the route to get vaccinated is [difficult] so that is why we are not seeing those numbers.”

However, co-coordinator of the National COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign Major David Clarke told The Wallpaper today that his team has scheduled going into the Constitution River Terminal as a means of reaching out to the PSV community to improve vaccine intake. 

To this, the AOPT Chairman made a renewed call for PSV drivers and van owners to take the jab.

“We encourage our members to get vaccinated especially because they will have a high number of passengers on their vehicles. If they are afraid they need to speak with their medical advisors or get a PCR test.”

Apart from vaccination concerns, Raphael said that commuters were making it difficult for drivers by blatantly disobeying the protocols.

“When they get on to the buses they remove the masks from their face and their reason for doing that is because they cannot breathe properly in the vehicles.”

He said that AOPT has recommended to the government to have monitors to ensure that people comply.

Efforts to have a comment from drivers as to why they were hesitant about taking the jab proved futile up to Press time.