Taken for a ride?: A woman getting into a taxi outside 1Utama Shopping Centre in Petaling Jaya.
PETALING JAYA: When it comes to common courtesy, many taxi drivers in the Klang Valley have much to catch up on.
Passengers and tourists have to put up with their attitudes, besides their overcharging and refusal to use the meters.
A Thai tourist, who wished to be known as Kate, 22, found out the hard way during her trip here, lamenting that there “were also elements of sexual harassment”.
“They consider all Thai women to be prostitutes. It’s in the way the cabbies talk and act,” she told The Star.
Kate said getting a polite taxi driver “depended on one’s luck”.
Student K. Kamles, 22, said some cabbies refused to take him to where he wanted to go.
“They’re especially like that in front of shopping malls,” he said while waiting for a taxi outside 1Utama Shopping Centre.
“You get a lot of them who don’t want to go where you want to. And, on top of it, they’re very rude,” he added.
Mauritian student Beeday Urvashi, 20, said taxi drivers who knew she wasn’t local tended to exploit this.
“They would take the longest route,” she said.
Metered Taxi Drivers Task Force chairman Amran Jan agreed that the industry suffered from “bad apples who needed to be removed”.
“We have dignity and don’t want to be seen as gangsters,” he said. “If the authorities want to clean us up, we fully support it.”
He said the Land Public Transport Commission (SPAD) needed to control who could become taxi drivers, and that occasional classes alone were not enough.
“You can’t just have a one-week programme and fix everything in a few days,” he said.
SPAD chairman Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar was reported recently as saying that the commission was looking into conducting courtesy training and safety programmes for cabbies.
THE STAR
