Going by the nom de plume "Old Tan", an old Chinese taxi driver has his own column in the Chinese-language Oriental Daily newspaper. He does give an entertaining account of his many adventures and misadventures while driving a cab for a living.

His article published on 28th March, 2007 is entitled: "Nobody knows this bile filling my stomach". In this piece, he explains why he has stopped picking up lucrative fares from the KLIA. Because of a "new but strange" arrangement, he and many other taxi drivers have to wait for many hours before the turn comes for them to pick up passengers.

Some taxi drivers have therefore resorted to employing touts to waylay potential passengers in the arrival hall, before the latter proceed to the counter where they could buy the taxi coupons. This sort of action is of course illegal, and I have seen these touts at work at the airport.

Old Tan expresses great dissatisfaction with the airport management. He opines aloud why the management people do not consult the taxi drivers themselves, in order to improve taxi services at the KLIA, for the benefit of both the cabbies and the passengers.

Catching a cab at the airport has always been a problem, going back to the days when passengers had to arrive at and depart from the Subang Airport. Since Old Tan does not explain clearly what "new and strange arrangement" are, we can only rely on our own wildest conjecture. Whenever such a strange thing occurs, you can be sure of some invincible hand tilting the level playing field on behalf of vested interest groups - or on behalf of the NEP.

Sensible advice

One also wonders why it is so hard for the airport authorities to put an end to the touts. They operate in broad daylight, in a very public open space. Can you imagine a real First World airport tolerating touts getting customers for cab drivers? Has any of you seen such touts at the London Heathrow Airport, or the Singapore Changi Airport for that matter?

Old Tan's suggestion that the KLIA management people should talk to the taxi drivers is the obviously sensible advice. Again, this is another piece of sensible advice that will fall on deaf ears. We know how things are done in Malaysia. When regulations and rules in any trade are proclaimed and executed, it is simply not within our culture for people at the very top to consult the operators on the ground and other such stock holders. Top people are always omniscient like God, so why should they consult anybody, except expensive consultants in public relation.

The run from the city centre to the KLIA is indeed a lucrative fare for the cabbies. They usually charge from RM65 to RM70 for a single passenger. When you call a cab to take you to KLIA, the cab company dispatcher will sometimes announce your address and allow cab drivers to compete for the fare. Whoever gets to you first can pick you up.

The run to KLIA is especially lucrative if the taxi is fuelled by natural gas. Natural gas is cheaper than petrol, and fuel costs rising as they do, many taxi drivers have installed the special equipment for a few thousand ringgits to allow their machine to run on gas.

There is only one snag. Natural gas gives them much lower mileage than petrol. The poor taxi drivers have to top up his fuel tank often, sometimes daily.

Petronas enjoys monopoly in the supply of natural gas. For some customer-unfriendly reasons, Petronas has not built many petrol stations that store and supply natural gas to motorists. There is one near the KLIA, and another in Cheras. That means very long queue for the cabbie every time he has to refill his gas tank, sometimes waiting idly for hours. Time lost is money lost.

Saving cost will always remain high on the operating agenda of the taxi driver. The costs of servicing and repair and of spare parts and tyres, on top of the spiralling fuel costs, have made it hard to drive a taxi for a decent living in urban centres. Still, the metered taxi fare in Malaysia is one of the cheapest in Asia. The convenience and cost saving of the public have been provided at the expense of the welfare and professionalism of the cabbies.

When you pay peanuts, you can only expect to get monkeys. No wonder so many monkeys have joined in the taxi business and start fleecing customers. If the rate of meter charges is raised somewhat, even an unemployed graduate can make a decent living driving a cab, while he or she waits for a permanent job. Naturally, such a request from taxi drivers and their associations to raise their rates have been ignored.

Getting a permit

The biggest problem for taxi drivers is of course that of getting a permit.

Not many taxi drivers whom I have met in my 30 year experience of taking cabs in the Klang Valley have their own taxi permit. Most of them rent their permit from a company, paying RM 18 to RM 20 per day for the favour.

One such taxi driver gave me a lesson in taxi accounting just last week, as he struggled through the choking traffic from Cheras towards Bukit Bintang. Each company would be given at least 3000 permits. At RM 20 per day per car for rental, the company will make RM60000 per month. Each of the ten share-holders, including K (he mentioned the name of a famous politician), will make RM 6000 per month, for getting the permit and doing nothing much else.

If you are a cynical citizen like me, many questions automatically will come to mind. Who are the share-holders of those taxi companies? What would qualify them to apply and hold those permits? How does one go about applying for 3000 permits in one go? How are decisions made to award such a massive number of taxi permits to one single company? Can I form a company and then get those permits?

This practice is rent collection through and through. Meanwhile, the taxi drivers have become victims of the classical capitalist exploitation explained by Karl Marx. They have no power to appropriate their own means of production, while the people with capital and political connection get filthy rich on the labour of those who produce the services..

The plight of the taxi drivers has finally received sympathetic attention from the New Straits Times . The NST is generally pro-government, since it is also owned by Umno, the dominant party in the ruling coalition. Recently though, the NST has at times decided to be pro-people as well, as long as the issue does not undermine the authority of the government.

In an editorial entitled Taxing Taxis which appeared on Saturday March 12, 2007, the NST has this to say about the issue of taxi permit:

"Time and again, taxi drivers and their associations have asked for the liberalisation of permits to include a higher proportion of individual drivers, as opposed to the issuance of permits in bulk to the fleet companies."

Good work not rewarded

"The Chairman of the Commercial Vehicle Licensing Board, Datuk Markiman Kobiran, dismisses this as impractical, as drivers freed of the need to pay up half of their daily earnings in vehicle rental would only work as and when they want. It is not a tenable argument."

"The present system does not reward good work; it punishes bad work. Hence, even principled drivers are tempted to negotiate higher fares with passengers if they can only to fall foul of charges off fleecing. When it comes to the local taxi service, it's not the drivers who need straightening out, it's the system."

Bravo indeed! It is not the drivers who needs straightening out, but a political system that gives such awesome powers to puffed-up but simple-minded napoleons like all those people involved in our public transport sector. On this rare occasion, I have to applaud the editorial writer of the NST . Well done!

The perennial problems faced by the hardworking honest cabbies numbering in the tens of thousands throughout the country, including their problems with bad hats in their midst, have been created by insensitive, irresponsive, and corrupt governance. The problems will not be solved at the root, as long as powerful vested interest groups are deeply entrenched within our political structure.

These problems are symptomatic of everything that has gone wrong in our beautiful and beloved nation. On the surface, our leaders have the skin to aspire towards a first class nation. Beneath the Veil of Maya however, the reality is one of corruption, nepotism, and exploitation of the marginalised, the disenfranchised, the dispossessed, like the humble taxi drivers.

Next time you get off a cab, please do give the cab driver a small tip.