PHUKET: Not even sworn into office yet and the Move Forward MPs for Phuket are already asking questions about big issues that have affected tourists and island residents for decades, namely the state of the taxi cartels’ vice-like, and state enforced, grip on which taxis may serve tourists at the airport.
Tourists wait for a taxi by the side of the road in front of Phuket airport, instead of using any taxis from the groups that have paid AoT for the privilege of exclusive rights to serve tourists arriving in Phuket. Photo: Phuke Info Center
Move Forward Phuket MP Somchart Techathavorncharoen on Thursday confirmed that he had sent a formal request to the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand (CAAT), with a copy addressed to the Minister of Transport, to allow ‘taxi app’ drivers to serve tourists at the airport.
The letter followed Mr Somchart on Tuesday (May 23) visiting Phuket Provincial Police Commander Maj Gen Sermphan Sirikong and Phuket City Police Chief Col Pratuang Ponmana to discuss ongoing violent and aberrant behaviour by taxi drivers against ‘taxi app’ drivers in Phuket.
By Friday, Mr Somchart explained that on Tuesday he also raised the issue with the Phuket Land Transport Office (PLTO) – the longstanding enforcer on behalf of the taxi cartels on the island.
The explanations he has received so far from the PLTO, led by PLTO Chief Adcha Buachan, is a description of which types of taxis are issued which types of licences plates – which according to them dumbfoundingly determines where the taxis may operate, not the other way around, as if it were not the PLTO’s fault that that taxi app vehicles were not allowed to operate in specified areas.
It must take a very short memory indeed to forget that the PLTO has already exposed for illegally arresting what they deemed to be ‘illegal green-plate taxis’ earlier this year.
By the time the PLTO publicly recognised that some green-plate taxi drivers not registered in Phuket are legally allowed to operate on the island, they shifted their public image releases to targetting illegal taxi app drivers. There was no mention of any recompense for a government office, supported by police officers, illegally preventing fully legal taxi drivers from making a legal income. They literally prevented Thais from working legally, and there was not even an apology.
Shamefully for the police, it has taken an MP-elect to get them to finally this week recognise that no taxi groups have any legal right to even attempt to enforce exclusive rights to serve customers in public areas – despite the nigh-countless incidents they have been involved in regarding green-plate ‘taxi queue’ drivers.
Funnily enough, while Phuket police initially were present to support the beginning of the PLTO’s camapign against non-cartel-approved taxi drivers, over the ensuing months they silently disappeared from the PLTO checkpoints, as if they could see the problem coming.
But the focus on taxis at the airport has really hit a nerve. Public pressure and the fouling of Phuket’s reputation as a tourism destination spreading across social media, among Thais as well as international tourists, thanks to the airport taxi drivers, can longer be ignored. They have not been wanted for a long time, and the decades of complicity, and support, by previous governments is now plainly understood by everyone. The PLTO can keep on with its appalling attempts to save face, but its role in protecting taxi cartels to maintain their control is now historical.
If the PLTO is to maintain the standard response when Thai officials are finally called to explain their antics, they will attempt to pivot, and say that which taxis may serve the airport is beyond their control; that the decision is in the remit of Airports of Thailand (AoT) through offering concessions to selected taxi cooperatives to serve passengers at the airport. It is here where the real fun begins.
As confirmed in the management transfer of the Buri Ram, Udon Thani and Krabi airports from the Department of Airports (DoA) to Airports of Thailand, the airports remain state assets. The critical relevance of that point for Phuket was much overlooked when the Department of Airports gave that as their response to corruption claims in September last year.
After decades of allowing overinflated fares being charged by exclusive groups of taxi drivers at the airport, who of course paid millions of baht for the privilege, the Department of Airports itself has confirmed that the airports that AoT operates remain state facilities, despite AoT being a public company listed on the Thai stock exchange (with the Ministry of Finance maintaining a majority hold of the shares).
To that, the PLTO and AoT now have to face the prospect that Phuket’s newly elected MPs do not even have to ask either of them to let other taxi drivers serve the airport. All they have to do is ship their request to Cabinet, when it is finally formed, and make the necessary changes there.
The control of Phuket taxi cartels, which Mr Somchart even described as engaging in ‘mafia’ behaviour, is finally being confronted. If the public response to Mr Somchart’s efforts so far have been any indication, a great number of people in Phuket support the move, as does The Phuket News.
Well done, Mr Somchart. Keep up the good work.
