Macau Taxi Sector Federation Chairman Wong Peng Kei said on Sunday that most of Macau’s rogue taxi drivers are youngsters who joined the sector in recent years.
According to The Macau Post Daily, Wong made the remarks while speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a forum hosted by think tank Macau Wisdom Convergence Network in a sitting-out area in Fai Chi Kei. The open-air forum was about how local taxi services can be improved.
Wong said that while there are some rogue taxi drivers in Macau, such as those refusing to pick up and overcharging passengers, such drivers were just a small percentage of all the city’s cabbies.
Wong said that many of the young cabbies used to work in casinos, adding that they only started to work as taxi drivers after being sacked.
Wong said that normally these young taxi drivers could not earn as much as they did when they worked as casino dealers, even though in the taxi industry they work longer hours than in the past.
“These young people could earn more than 20,000 patacas working eight hours a day [as dealers] in casinos, while they normally work for more than 10 hours per day as taxi drivers,” Wong said, adding that this was one of the reasons why some young taxi drivers try to earn more money by deviating from the right path.
Wong, who pointed out that he has been working as a taxi driver for 38 years, said that the “old generation” taxi drivers rarely commit offences such as refusing to pick up or overcharging passengers.
Pointing out that the local government has recently signed a cooperation deal with Alibaba Group to develop Macau into a smart city, Wong the agreement with the mainland’s e-commerce giant should also include the development of a ride-hailing mobile application for the city’s taxis.
Macau currently has about 1,600 licensed taxis, according to official data.
