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Taxi drivers ‘need more help to meet LTA’s availability standards’

SINGAPORE — Citing taxi drivers’ concerns over the mileage requirement for weekends and a shortage of relief cabbies, a taxi association said yesterday that its members need more help to meet the Land Transport Authority’s (LTA) availability standards.

Although there has been a 13 per cent increase in two-shift taxis from 2012 to September this year, about 10,000 taxi drivers here — or 34 per cent — remain one-man operators who may still fail to meet the LTA’s requirements despite driving long hours, said the National Taxi Association (NTA).

These operators have problems finding relief drivers due to competition from taxi companies looking for hirers — as opposed to shift drivers — to take over unhired cabs and a decline in taxi driver vocational licence (TDVL) holders, the association said yesterday at a media briefing.

More than half of the existing TDVL holders — 99,392 as of August, down from 100,382 at the beginning of the year — are currently inactive, said the NTA.

“Reaching out to them to join the pool of taxi drivers will go a long way in helping with taxi availability,” said its executive adviser, Mr Ang Hin Kee.

Comfort taxi driver Simon Lee is one of those who find it a struggle to meet the 250km daily mileage requirement on his own. “Currently, relief drivers come and go. Perhaps, the authorities can encourage or make it compulsory for TDVL holders to join the industry for six months or a year as part of their training,” said Mr Lee, 59, who usually works more than 15 hours on a weekday.

As of Oct 31, about 13,000 TDVL holders have registered on the LTA’s e-portal, which matches hirers with potential relief drivers. One hundred and thirty successful matches have been made since the portal’s launch last year. “As more TDVL holders register their particulars, there should be higher instances of successful matching between hirers and relief drivers,” said the LTA.

While acknowledging that the LTA had taken into account the association’s feedback by lowering the minimum mileage requirement on weekends, the NTA called for its further relaxation. The NTA also called for the taxi-availability computation to be reviewed to exclude “unhired taxis” (those that are not rented out to taxi drivers to ply for hire on the roads), those in workshops for repairs and premium taxi services.

In response to the association’s feedback, the LTA noted that the taxi availability (TA) framework had reversed a six-year downward trend of dual-shift cabs.

“From 2006 to 2012, the share of two-shift taxis declined steadily from 60 per cent to just 53 per cent ... after the TA framework was introduced, the proportion of two-shift taxis has increased to about 66 per cent in less than two years.”

As the average daily mileage for a two-shift cab is 450km — one and a half times that of a single shift — the arrangement has benefited commuters, it added.

Noting that the current number of TDVL holders is still higher than in recent years, the LTA said: “As representatives of taxi drivers, the NTA should help to attract more inactive drivers to ply the trade and increase the taxi supply.”

As for revising the computation of taxi fleet, the LTA said calculating taxi availability against the entire registered taxi fleets will encourage taxi companies to reduce the number of unhired taxis and optimise their fleet.

The current computation does take into consideration taxis that are on standby or in the workshops, it said.

Taxi companies can also apply to the LTA to exempt niche and premium taxis from the framework, although the authority said it would be “judicious” to avoid granting exemptions to operators who “simply categorise their taxis as premium taxis to circumvent the TA standards”.

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