OPINION> Commentary
Manage taxis better
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-06 07:42

The Chongqing municipal government's prompt action to end a strike by taxi drivers should be lauded.

It ordered taxi companies to lower the management fee they charge taxi drivers to last year's level. This charge raised by companies without the approval of the local government had reduced the income of drivers by more than 20,000 yuan ($2,898) a year.

It is not the first strike of its kind in recent years and will not be the last until the taxi management system is reasonably streamlined.

It is not a lack of tight administration by the municipal government of the taxi companies that is the root cause of this and other similar strikes. It is the unjustifiable management system of monopolized companies that has embroiled taxi drivers under their control in repeated conflicts with their firms.

This system makes it impossible for individuals to register as self-employed taxi drivers. But companies pay only 50,000 yuan ($725) toward the quota of a taxi that can be used for 25 years. So if anyone wants to be a taxi driver, he or she has to be under the management of such a company.

As a result, most of the income from running a taxi goes to these companies. With no competition among these firms, the total number of which is restricted by a local government, it is impossible for drivers to have a choice between a bad and a good company.

Increasingly heavy charges by these companies on the drivers have become the primary source of grievances against the management system.

In the most recent incident, taxi companies in the southwestern city of Chongqing increased the charges by 50 to 70 yuan for each driver a day starting early this year. Faced with such unfair charges, taxi drivers have no way to negotiate with their companies. Strike becomes the only means for them to express their opposition to the charges.

Repeated strikes by taxi drivers should have come as a warning to local governments.

In the interest of both taxi drivers and the general public, the most urgent question a government needs to ponder is whether these taxi companies are really necessary. If they are, detailed rules must be made defining their roles and specifying what proportion of profits they should get from the money taxi drivers make. If they are not, they should be scrapped as early as possible.

Another important question is how the rights and interests of taxi drivers should be protected if these companies continue to exist. In other words, taxi drivers need a channel to negotiate with their firms in a fair manner.

The conflicts between taxi drivers and their companies have long been a topic of debate. The Chongqing government should have anticipated the outbreak of a crisis if it kept track of the accumulation of the drivers' grievances. This incident has a message for governments at all levels: they cannot afford to ignore even minor concerns of a particular community.

(China Daily 11/06/2008 page10)