Carrier Strike: Deactivation of the ATU, Formalization of Groups and Other Requests to the Government

This Monday's transport strike , which was partially complied with in several parts of Lima Metropolitana, especially on the Central Highway and Ventanilla, aroused other demands that go beyond the demand for fuel increases or the price of tolls.

Drivers who participated in the strike and tried to block the Central Highway are now asking that President Pedro Castillo fulfill his campaign promises and eliminate the Urban Transport Authority for Lima and Callao - ATU, the Superintendence of Land Transport of People, Freight and Goods (Sutran) and that collective taxis be formalized.

CARRIER ORDERS

The carriers from five groups, which carry out the service from Canta Callao to Gamarra, traveled to the Ministry of Transport and Communications, to request that the ATU and the Sutran be eliminated and that the collectives be formalized.

“(The protest is) the abuse of the ATU, the abuse of the Sutran and the increase in fuel. (...) Let the president eliminate them as he had promised,” he told América Noticias. Clever Benjamin Montes, one of the protesters.

“We are also demanding that the taxi collective be regulated,” he added.

In the same vein, other carriers and their relatives were expressed who were not shy about noting that they were informal carriers, but who were seeking formalization and were willing to pay taxes.

Thus, the orders of the carriers are as follows

- Elimination or restructuring of the ATU, a specialized technical agency of the Ministry of Transport and Communications, which aims to organize, implement and manage the Lima and Callao Integrated Transport System.

- Elimination or restructuring of the Sutran, which is responsible for promoting compliance with regulations through the control and supervision of agents involved in land transport and transit.

- Regulation of the taxi collective service which has already been implemented in some areas of the country.

CAMPAIGN PROMISES

It should be noted that, during his presidential campaign, then-candidate Pedro Castillo promised in April 2021, the deactivation of ATU and Sutran and said that would summon the country's transport unions to make a “real transport reform”.

“The ATU and Sutran have to be deactivated on the spot, to call the carriers and carry out with them the real reform or re-engineering of transport,” he said.

In addition, Castillo called the Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC) a 'fantoche', since, he said, this ministerial portfolio has not solved the real problems of transport nationwide.

“The MTC is a puppet because it does not challenge the big problems of transport and has created other parallel bodies for them to take responsibility (...) They do what they want,” he stressed at the time.

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