TAXI DRIVER: “ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?”

Lately we’ve a lot of complaints lodge against taxi drivers in Kalng Valley. These complaints vary from refuse to pick up passenger, refuse to use meter, overcharging and other offences.

These complaints also come from tourist and foreigners. Most common grouse is overcharging.

This somehow put us in the same league as other 3rd world countries.

Problems with taxi drivers are long standing issues that haven’t been resolved since ice age. The country has changed Prime Ministers and a few other ministers that were supposed to handle the problem, but unfortunately it is still there unresolved.

For the past few weeks we’ve heard about JPJ and LPKP or Commercial Vehicle Licensing Board conducting spot checks using undercovers to apprehend taxi flouting the licensing rules.

So what’s the result? Is there a sudden change in their (taxi driver) attitude? Do you see more taxi driver using meter and not overcharging? The answer is a simple ‘No’.

The relevant bodies are at lost in handling the taxi drivers. Numerous methods were used to address these problems. Countless compounds were given but it came to no end. So what else can the authority do?

The answer is simple. “Talk to them”. Fortunately the authorities have spoken to them ‘decades’ ago and the problem still exist. Not much has been done.

They taxi driver have requested the government to raise the fares. This fare has been in existence for the past 12 years. Since then, everything has gone up except taxi fares.

The rise in cost of living eats up into their daily take home income. The government authorities know how much a taxi driver can earn a day and how much is their daily cost to operate a taxi.

The government can’t simply raise the fares to offset what the taxi driver lost daily due to high operating cost. Just to please 25,000 taxi drivers, the rest of the rakyat have to put up with higher taxi fare.

So what else can the government do? For a start the government should consider giving individual permits to all taxi drivers. Abolish monopolistic system in taxi operation. Give taxi drivers choice whether they want to operate under a company or individually.

On average a taxi driver have to pay the taxi company RM1,500 a month to rent a taxi. After 4 years the taxi will be theirs. If you do the maths, a taxi driver spent RM72,000 for a Proton Iswara taxi that cost less than RM35,000.

In a nutshell, the taxi drivers are subsidizing more than 100% profits earned by the company.

What do the taxi driver got after 4 years? Nothing, except a 4 year old Proton Iswara taxi. And they don’t even have a permit under their name.

All this one sided terms made them turn into rogue taxi drivers. They have to overcharge for a living. This is nothing new and the government has done nothing to address this long existing problem. Stop this monopolistic business. Let them taxi driver earn their living. The taxi companies have been leeching taxi drivers hard work for God knows how many years.

If Najib want to talk about service to the people, this is his chance. By stopping taxi monopoly, the government can defer raising taxi fares as the take home income will be much better for the taxi drivers. They might not resort to overcharging or flouting meter ruling. As a result, he’ll make millions of passengers happy. That’s 25,000 votes from taxi drivers plus a few million votes from happy passengers.