By Ramesh Mathew
Staff Reporter
There are at least 3,000 parallel taxi operators in Qatar and the law enforcement agencies are quite capable of curbing their illegal activities, a senior Mowasalat official told a session of the UITP Middle East and North African Summit on Thursday.
These parallel operators are besides the many so-called `limousine' operators who are also providing somewhat an extended taxi service.
Mowasalat Taxi Management Office (TMO) manager Ali Hassan al-Emadi felt such parallel operators are causing enormous losses to the authorised taxi companies, and the transport authorities would take all steps to halt such unauthorised services.
Acknowledging that the parallel taxis have considerable presence in the country, al-Emadi hoped that with the complete upgrading of Mowasalat's Unified Call Centre and also with the equipping of Mowasalat and franchisee taxis with advanced communication gadgets such operators could be eventually phased out.
"The best way to weed such operators out is not to encourage their activities. It would be possible when the availability of taxis improves across the country, especially in Doha and surroundings," the official said and added that the country would have at least 7,000 taxis by 2022, when it hosts the FIFA World Cup.
Disclosing that Mowasalat has plans to award more franchisees to improve the availability of taxis, al-Emadi said more franchisees would be awarded to newcomers only if the present service providers are unable to meet the growing needs of the population.
Once more restructuring happens in the Ministry of Transport, the regulator would not only be able to ensure better quality taxi services in the country but their availability would also improve, said the official.
While answering queries from a woman delegate who complained of cheating by a taxi driver, the official said the participant should have noted the roof colour of the taxi concerned and lodged a complaint with its operators. However, the complainant was unable to recognise the roof colour as it was late in the evening.
She also sought to know if a decision could be made to change the colours of the franchisee taxis so that they could be recognised easily by travellers.
