TS,Thursday, December 9, 2010
It is the norm for taxi companies to collect a deposit of a few thousand ringgit from drivers before they are allowed to take delivery of a taxi.
Upon expiry of a few years contract, the driver has several options. He can continue to operate the vehicle as a taxi by renting the permit from the company or use his own permit.
He can sell the taxi to the company or convert it into a private car after paying off some excise duty. In any case, the taxi company will retain around RM600 of the deposit for a year to pay for summonses.
A few days ago, I gave my name and identity card number at a post office to check whether there are any summonses in my name. To my dismay, I found there were four summonses for speeding in 2005 for a premier taxi that I used to drive from 2002 and had returned it to the company in March 2004.
A staff of the taxi company had forwarded my name to the police. It was reported that 650,000 motorists are on the police blacklist and I have become part of the statistics. As such, I urge the authorities to make taxi companies responsible to pay off saman ekor instead of providing driver’s particulars as required in the notification sent out by the police.
I drove a budget taxi for six years with the company from August 2004 to July 2010; I was not notified of the four speeding summonses for the premier taxi in 2005. The company still has RM600 of my deposit paid for the budget taxi to pay for summonses. Will they pay or again forward my particulars to the police?
If I get a knock on the door at night during a police operation out to nab blacklisted motorists, will I be able to sue the taxi company for compensation?
I would prefer the authorities act on my recommendation that the onus should be on the taxi companies to settle saman ekor as they have collected deposits for it.
YS Chan
Kuala Lumpur
No comments:
Post a Comment