General Secretary of the Lagos State Taxi Drivers and Cab Operators Association, popularly known as Yellow Taxis or traditional taxis, Mr Taiwo Omolekan, tells GBENRO ADEOYE about the challenges be...
General Secretary of the Lagos State Taxi Drivers and Cab Operators Association, popularly known as Yellow Taxis or traditional taxis, Mr Taiwo Omolekan, tells GBENRO ADEOYE about the challenges being faced by the members of the association with the advent of e-cab hailing services like Uber and Bolthas been your experience since the advent of e-cab hailing services like Uber and Bolt in Lagos?
During Fashola’s administration, I met with him more than five times. In his office or his house, we would sit and discuss how to move Lagos forward in the area of traffic management. When Ambode came in, he didn’t even give us any attention. We wrote several letters to him to say that we would like to meet with him but throughout his tenure, we were unable to meet with him let alone talk about the problems in the transport sector. He didn’t give us any audience.
The vehicle particulars that taxis operating in Lagos are expecting to get are nine. Body tag is compulsory for yellow taxis to have; we pay N3,500 annually to get it. Apart from that, we must get driver’s certification and renew it every year; it costs N3,000. It is called LASDRI certificate. If you don’t have it, you will pay N20,000 as fine to the Vehicle Inspection Office. Apart from that, we must obtain driver’s badge, which is N6,500.
Yes, because of all these things, we decided that it would be better to launch our own hailing service like the one Uber and others have.No, we will continue to use it; it is our traditional colour but people can use our application also hail our cabs electronically.A company came to us and said because of our suffering, they would deploy the application for us.
Many of us face a lot of challenges like I said; many people took loans from banks to buy vehicles which they are using as taxis. Many were unable to pay back and the banks have been running after them. Then many homes have crises. People even call us from everywhere to tell us to find a solution to the problem and embrace technology.
Ask drivers of those e-cab hailing services how many of them pay tax. They don’t pay. From the calculation we did recently, the amount the Lagos Government was losing every month through the activities of these e-cab hailing services was about N1.2m. They have about 33,000 vehicles in their fleets. Imagine if all those 33,000 drivers obtain tax clearance certificates, you can guess how much that will be.
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