Local cabbies reject taxi tariff price hike proposal

Local taxi drivers have rejected a proposed price hike of taxi tariffs, it has been confirmed recently.

Transportation and Telecommunication Minister Kamal Ahmed had apparently hinted to a rise in tariff rates lately following the recent fuel price hike.

However, local taxi drivers came up with a “special” message to the Minister, voicing out their rejection to hike in taxi rates.

Bahraini cabbies clearly said “the petrol price hike isn’t a good reason to raise taxi tariffs, as the current rate is already unacceptable to a large segment of passengers.”

Bahrain Taxi, a page on social media created by local taxi drivers, posted a series of videos recently, in a bid to tighten the gap between them and passengers.

The videos received a humongous number of likes on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram.

It included videos promoting local cabbies’ services in innovative and unusual methods, including using different international languages.

However, the most interesting post by the group that received the highest number of views and likes so far was a video uploaded on February 1.

The minute-and-a-half long video presented a character that was not announced before. It was a clown speaking directly to the people of Bahrain and clearly rejecting the Minister’s statements to increase the prices. He called upon passengers to choose local taxis so “tariffs wouldn’t be increased, instead, they would be reduced by at least 40 pc.”

The unnamed clown said in the video, “Recently, the government cut all subsidies on meat, electricity, water and fuel in order to stem economic crises caused by sliding in crude oil prices. The Minister commented that it’s possible to change/increase public transportation services tariff.”

He continued in a direct message to the Ministry as well as passengers, saying, “Well, with our respect, this won’t help fix the problem. Taxi industry will lose more traffic and business as the service is already expensive. Most of the common people cannot even afford the current tariff of taxi services in Bahrain. Our problem is how to run more jobs, more traffic and this is what will fix the problem not to increase the prices. No thanks we are not interested.”

While speaking to DT News yesterday, Public Transport Drivers Society (PTDS) member and founder of Bahrain Taxi Online smartphone app, Waleed Fakhro said, “We reject such a decision. If the Ministry truly wants to help us, why don’t they exclude local taxi drivers from the increased gasoline price rates?”

He explained “if traffic increases among local taxi services, it would help in maintaining reasonable prices for all passengers.”

Speaking about the current tariffs, Fakhro clarified that “cabbies stationed near shopping malls and hotels charge an extra dinar or two as they usually wait for a couple of hours for their next customer.”

He said: “increasing normal traffic of local taxis would reduce waiting hours of local cabbies at stations, eventually reducing the tariffs by 25 pc to 40 pc.”

“We receive many complaints about local taxi drivers, who try to fleece customers, especially foreigners. I would like to clarify that there are approximately 1000 local cabbies in the country, and some actually follow such nasty behaviour. But the 300 drivers registered with Bahrain Taxi Online would never harm passengers in anyway. The app has an open rating, feedback and complaint option for passengers, helping us rectify and improve our services,” Fakhro added.

As reported earlier by DT News, the app allows passengers to locate nearby taxis, so tariffs would be less, instead of calling them all the way from across the island and ultimately cost them a big sum of money.

Meanwhile, the app received a positive feedback from the public, and according to Fakhro, the app’s Facebook page received around 4,000 ‘likes’ in the past two weeks, after the series of promotional videos were launched.