Phuket Vice Governor Amnuay Pinsuwan made the request at a meeting held at Phuket Provincial Hall yesterday (Nov 22), held to discuss the list of complaints that local ‘green plate’ taxi drivers submitted to the provincial government last month.
Present at the meeting were members of the Phuket Provincial Land Transport Committee, along with representatives from controlling taxi cooperatives across the island.
Erroneous or not, the list of complaints submitted by the taxi groups were:
- There is no law to support app taxis
- They cannot be controlled and monitored
- They get customers, even though their vehicles are illegal
- Passengers are not safe
- Passengers are not protected by law (regarding insurance coverage)
To correct these issues, the taxi groups requested that the government do the following:
- Create a specific law to allow app taxis
- Have the Land Transport Department issue special licence plates for app taxis
- Make the compulsory stickers that app taxis must bear larger (15x20 inches)
- Specify the name of the person requesting permission to use the vehicle as an app taxi
In response, the meeting asked for cooperation from the operators, and to help by reporting information about vehicles that have been used to commit an offence.
“But emotions must be controlled”, the operators were told.
“There must be no clashes and quarrels in order to create a good image for Phuket Province and matters of law enforcement,” Vice Governor Amnuay said.
“We ask for cooperation from operators to report offenders through the Traffy Fondue application, which has 120 agencies in Phuket province as administrators to receive reports from citizens and work as problem-solving tools in all matters,” he added.