Metered taxi drivers protest against Uber

BANGKOK, June 23 (TNA) – Metered taxi drivers protested against the car hailing service Uber, calling for help from the government. About 60 metered taxi drivers gathered outside Parliament today when the National Legislative Assembly (NLA) was discussing the problem of Uber ride-sharing services. Woraphol Kaemkhuntod, president of the Professional Association of Public Taxi Motorists summited a letter to the NLA chairman through Deputy Secretary General of the Senate, Pongkit Aroonpukdeesakul, asking for fairness to professional taxi drivers. Woraphol said metered taxis were affected by operation of Uber app based transportation service. He claimed that the US-based ride-hailing company's app used private cars as public vehicles without paying taxes and now snatched passengers from registered taxi operators. Meanwhile, he said metered taxis bear more cost of operation. They must pay 100,000 baht to be licensed taxis for public service and the interest rate for the taxi hire purchase is higher than those of personal cars. It is more difficult to get the taxi driver licenses as the authorities need to check their criminal record. He disagreed with any attempt to legalize Uber service and called for fairness for legal taxi service. He threatened that if the demand is ignored, his group will remove their metered taxi tags and convert into app based transportation service without paying taxes. (TNA)