passengers who try to rip them off, Senior Magistrate the Wor. Will Francis said yesterday.

Giving Dion Burgess, 26, a $200 fine for cheating a taxi driver, Mr Francis said: "Taxi drivers are having a hard time out there. This court is here to protect them.'' Sgt. Wilbert McLean, prosecuting, said that on Monday night Burgess took a taxi from the MarketPlace supermarket in Hamilton Parish to The Royal Gazette office on Par-La-Ville Road in Hamilton. Police were called when he refused to pay the $14.40 fare.

Burgess, of Khyber Pass, Warwick, admitted the offence. He said he had gone to the newspaper's office to get money from Gazette employee Mr. Kenny Burch, for whom he worked as a caretaker. But when he arrived Mr Burch was out.

Mr. Francis told him: "You stopped a taxi with no money on you, on the off-chance that Mr. Burch would let you have the money. If taxi drivers had to do their job like this it wouldn't be a job worth doing. You were acting dishonestly.''