The news became public after a video of the conflict was posted on a popular local social media channel on Thursday (Oct 13). In the clip, a man is heard talking angrily to a female taximeter driver while she picks up two foreign tourists in front of Katathani Phuket Beach Resort on Kata Noi Beach in Karon.
The car is a red and yellow Phuket metered taxi, officially allowed to work anywhere on the island including Phuket International Airport. The Toyota sedan bears an SHA Plus certification sticker as well as the 1584 complaints hotline sticker and the driver’s phone number enabling it to identify the driver as a legal service provider.
The conversation develops in Thai language. A man, not seen in the clip, tells the female driver that she “should not come here again as there is already a local taxi queue in this place” to serve customers.
The female driver asks if it is the hotel forbidding picking up passengers, but only gets accusations of stealing other drivers’ customers.
“That’s right, there is a queue here. What if I would be stealing guests from your queue?” the man says.
“If you don’t believe me, try and come to pick customers here again,” he threatens.
Speaking to reporters after the incident, the female taxi driver explained that the confrontation in front of Katathani happened at around 11am this Thursday (Oct 13). The woman said that she had been working as a Phuket taxi driver for 15 years and never had had any incidents of this kind before either at Katathani nor anywhere else.
The woman proceeded to say that she did not find the case serious and thus did not report it to any officials. Yet, she would report if it happens again.
“Usually it is up to the customer to choose whether to use a hotel car or a metered taxi. It’s good that nothing serious happened this time, the man just shouted at me and forbade me to pick up passengers at the aforementioned hotel again,” the driver said.
“This incident was not very serious, therefore I did not report it. But what if I have other customers asking to pick them up from this hotel? I am worried there can be another incident. If I come again and face the same problem, I will report the case to authorities. And I would like the government to speed up their taxi drivers’ training to eliminate bad taxis and illegal taxi apps from Phuket,” she added.
Phuket officials are yet to react to the incident, the latest one in the whole series of resonant cases which became public amid tourism revival.
On September 2, four tourists from Israel found themselves in the middle of a dispute at Rassada Pier. The foreigners were forced to take a local taxi instead of a vehicle they booked via a mobile application as the local club had a “concession” with the ferry operator. Police ruled both sides were in the right.
On September 28, two foreign tourists were forced to leave their booked van at Phuket International Airport as the vehicle was not “approved” to pick up tourists at the airport. Airports of Thailand Phuket branch (AoT Phuket) claimed security as the reason for this.
On Oct 1 a conflict sparked between a female taxi driver from JustGrab service and member of a local queue at Cafe fel Mar in Kamala. The woman’s car was damaged by one of the local drivers during the confrontation. Both parties were declared to be in the wrong.
Yet, the aforementioned recent cases are nowhere close to what happened in 2013 when a US Navy aircraft carrier was caught in the middle of a local taxi dispute. The 5,500-strong crew of USS Nimitz were forced to use the services of a local taxi club instead of free shuttle buses that American sailors had enjoyed previously.
Local taxi drivers physically barred any vehicles other than those "registered" with their club from coming into the port while USS Nimitz was docked there.
“If we allow just anyone to come in here when we don’t know who they are, then if anything happens to the passengers, it will be difficult to place blame. We might be blamed for letting them in,” local village headman Narong Kumban explained at the time.