By Majorie van Leijen www.emirates247.com
When Carry Caspers, a UK resident of Dubai decided to go to the neighbouring emirate of Sharjah, she planned to rely on the road knowledge of the cabbies there.
“I took a cab from the Dubai-Sharjah cross point. I was hoping to just tell the driver where I had to go and then relax. And when the driver nodded, I assumed he would drop me at my destination. But alas! He only drove to the nearby area and announced, ‘From here I do not know how to go further’.”Carry had to switch taxis, while she was in fact only one street away from her destination. “Another Dh10 gone for a distance that was supposed to add just Dh3,” she says.
Complaints about cabbies are not uncommon. In the first half of this year 5,172 tickets against taxi-drivers had been counted. This is however an anticipated decrease compared to the year-to-year 18,000 tickets in 2010 and 20,000 in 2009.
“We play a vital role in educating drivers before recruitment as well as after they make a violation by subjecting them to training courses and by making them aware about the traffic regulations adopted by our department,” says Faisal Al Mahmood, head of the Monitoring Section and Quality Service at Sharjah Transport Corporation (STC). More info