Erratic Taxis

Straits Time Forum
Dec 5, 2006
Cabbies not allowed to offload passengers

I REFER to Mr Chew Boon Keong's letter, 'Taxi service: Surcharge is king, not passenger' (ST, Nov 27).

Mr Chew and other readers may like to know that taxi drivers have no right to offload passengers before taking them to their destination, when the taxi driver receives a call booking.

Under the Road Traffic (Public Service Vehicles) Rules, it is an offence for any taxi driver to terminate the hiring of a taxi or require a passenger to alight before the passenger is conveyed to his destination.

The Land Transport Authority (LTA) takes a serious view of such offences and will take action against the offenders. However, we need the assistance and cooperation of passengers.

We request Mr Chew to provide us with the taxi registration number (with prefix and suffix) and date and time of incident so that we can investigate the matter.

Passengers who encounter similar experiences should do likewise to help us curb this errant practice by taxi drivers.

Our number is 1800-CALL LTA (1800-2255 582).

Naleeza Ebrahim (Ms)
Deputy Director,
Media Relations Land Transport Authority


I am storing the number on my HP right now.

I encountered a few occasion when Taxi refuse to stop even though they are empty and didn’t put up NOT FOR HIRED signs.

More of the time they just act blur and drive on the furthest lane or simply look to their right even when their taxis are going forward.

I have wrote the various Taxi companies and all so call “investigation” are not complete even though I provided them the Taxi registration and time. One incident they just claims “There were no such driver for the registration of your description, please provide us with more info”.

What the $%%#$#!!!!!!!!??

Next time I will just write to LTA.