Driver dilemma

Up to a year ago, Sebastian Henry* was toiling more than 12 hours each day as a chef to earn a weekly salary of $15,000.

He would typically wake up around 4 a.m. each day to give himself sufficient time to prepare the breakfast menu at the St Catherine cook shop where he was employed.

“And me nah reach home ‘til night, you understand, because when we finish, we haffi prep for the next day,” Henry recounted.

Then a friend introduced him to the global ride-sharing company InDrive as a way of boosting his income. The economic and personal benefits were instantly rewarding, he recounted.

InDrive – like its counterparts UBER, Lyft, Ride Jamaica and 876OnTheGo – is a company that provides an Internet-based application that allows drivers to use privately owned vehicles to transport passengers free or for a fee.

Now, through InDrive, Henry has time to drive his children to school before working an eight-hour shift that usually starts at 10 a.m. and “easily” take home $5,000 per day after refilling his gas tank and buying a meal for his children.

“Fi the week, that’s $25,000,” he told The Sunday Gleaner, during an interview last Friday, noting that this does not include the weekend, when there is usually an uptick in business.

“It is way better than a kill up miself pan a 9 to 5”, he said, making reference to the chef job, which he resigned five months after signing up with InDrive.

He is part of a WhatsApp group with more than two dozen InDrive operators who chose a similar path, Henry disclosed.

He acknowledged that it was not without risks for drivers and passengers, relating how he narrowly escaped death after a woman, pretending to be a passenger, lured him to an inner-city community where his car was surrounded by four men.

“We have a InDrive [WhatsApp] group and more than one time me see dem post pictures of drivers who missing,” said Henry.

Senior Superintendent Marlon Nesbeth, head of the St Andrew Central Police Division, said a public appeal he made to ride-sharing operators in March was based on a concerns that they were being targeted.

“At the time and prior to that time, there were incidents of robberies and one case of murder where one driver, from all indications, was lured somewhere and killed,” Nesbeth said.

He said the police have made several arrests, including a suspect in the killing, and believes that could have resulted in a fall-off in similar crimes.

Banned! – Or not?

Last Tuesday, the Jamaican Government announced an immediate one-year ban on the ride-sharing services, citing public safety concerns and claims that it was operating outside the legal framework established to monitor the public transportation sector.

The announcement by Transport Minister Daryl Vaz came a day after a body, believed to be that of missing primary school teacher Danielle Anglin, was found in Torrington district in Salt River, Clarendon, one month after her disappearance.

Anglin, 29, left her home in Hellshire, St Catherine, at 5:50 a.m. on May 13, but never made it to St Peter Claver Primary School in Kingston, where she was a teacher, family members reported.

But during the interview last Friday, Henry noticed that “work” was still coming to his phone through the InDrive app, raising questions about whether the “immediate” ban was in effect.

“See a work come in yah – Cassava Piece to Windward Road. It a work same way, man. Somebody gone wid da work deh already.”

Seconds later, there was another one, a request from a passenger seeking to travel from Mannings Hill Road to Olympic Way.

“We are in dialogue with the telecoms; should have (an) update today,” Vaz said on Friday, making reference to the country’s two main telecommunications companies after The Sunday Gleaner indicated that the InDrive app was still operational.

Both telecoms – Digicel and FLOW – sidestepped questions submitted by The Sunday Gleaner seeking to ascertain whether they have sought legal advice regarding the imposition of the ban and whether they were aware that the InDrive app was still operational.

“The company is currently drafting its response to a letter from the Honourable Minister of Science, Energy, Telecommunications and Transport Daryl Vaz. As such, we will not make a public statement at this time,” FLOW said in an emailed response.

Elon Parkinson, head of communications and corporate affairs at Digicel, said the company is aware of “further steps” being made by Vaz to regulate the ride-sharing transport sector.

“As such, Digicel awaits further information from the minister,” Parkinson said.

Anglin was running late for work when she and was picked up by a taxi, believed to be operating on the InDrive platform, which she had used at two other times, her mother Denise Anglin told The Gleaner last month.

The police say that through the use of technology and forensic capabilities, a vehicle was linked to the teacher’s disappearance and the driver subsequently arrested.

He later gave police investigators a statement admitting his involvement in her murder, police officials disclosed.

Jose Gandarilla, Central America Government Relations Manager for InDrive, said the company has since confirmed that he was not offering his services on its platform.

Law enforcement officials have since revealed that the suspect was convicted for sex-related crimes in the eastern Caribbean island of Antigua.

He was also convicted in the Jamaican Circuit Court in 2018 on five counts of assault, but escaped prison time after a judge handed him a three-year sentence that was suspended for two years, according to sources.

A suspended sentence means the offender stays out of prison if they have no brush with the law during the timeline stipulated by the court.

This disclosure left one member of Anglin’s family furious.

“I am mad as hell right now because if dem did lock him up before, him wouldn’t be out there to do something else and we don’t know how many more things he has done and nobody don’t find out,” the family member fumed.

“If he was in jail, this would not have happened to Danielle. The crime that he did, he would probably still be in jail serving time.”

The suspect’s name has not been released because he has not yet been charged with any crime, so details of the assault could not be ascertained.

“Why the hell wasn’t he in jail? Probably if he had served time and came out, he would be a different person because he probably wouldn’t want to go back to jail because he would see what jail is like,” said the family member. “But because he did that and he thinks, ‘you know what, I got off it so let me go ahead and commit another crime because I might can get off that too’.”

Challenges in opening sex offenders registry

Anglin’s case has reignited public debate about whether Jamaica’s sex offenders registry should be accessible to the public.

There are 420 registered sex offenders in Jamaica, the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) confirmed last Friday.

There were 168 registered sex offenders up February 2018 and 331 up to August 2021, according to previously released data from DCS, which has responsibility for the register.

Fifteen names have been added to the list since the start of this year. Forty-nine were added last year and 87 in 2022.

Minister of National Security Dr Horace Chang said the Government is not averse to giving more entities, including private businesses, access to the registry with proper control mechanisms, but cautioned that “we still have some ways to go” regarding full public access.

“How long that is? I don’t know. The mood right now is for total public access, but as legislators we have to take time out to examine all aspects of it,” said Chang, adding that “it is a matter that requires full interrogation and debate.”

At present, the registry is accessible to the police, persons engaged in professional counselling of sex offenders, persons managing educational institutions where an offender is enrolled or is seeking to be enrolled, persons managing facilities that treat vulnerable individuals, and prospective employers and employees of offenders.

Chang, who is also deputy prime minister, said the Government is not opposed to granting access to operators of ride-sharing transportation services and distribution entities, as long as they are “wiling to cooperate”.

“We can do that now, once the institutions demonstrate that, I have no problem instructing the correctional services to provide the information,” he said.

Chukwuemeka Cameron, a noted attorney and data privacy expert, believes opening up the registry to the public without proper safeguards could present a legal challenge for the Government.

As an example, Cameron argued that making the register publicly accessible would restrict a constitutional right to informational privacy as well as to impact other safeguards included in the Data Protection Act.

He suggested that the Government can provide restricted access, with clearly defined controls, to citizens seeking to find out if a sex offender is living in their community.

“For example, the person accessing the information would have to establish that they have a legitimate interest in accessing the information … and sign a document prohibiting them from freely sharing the information with unnecessary persons,” the attorney said.

“There are dangers that the sex offender, who has paid back his debt to society, is exposed to if that information is fully available.”

*Named changed.

livern.barrett@gleanerjm.com