By Melina Demetriou
TEMPERS flared outside the House of Representatives yesterday morning when police barred around 100 taxi drivers from dumping their cars in front of parliament.
The taxi service owners had gone to the House to protest at government plans to make it illegal for them to sell their licences to non-relatives and to make all new taxis ivory.
Police directed all but 10 taxi drivers, who were allowed to park on the street, to nearby roads, but some lost their temper and began to threaten police officers at the scene. Police eventually managed to restore order peacefully.
The taxi company owners – minus their taxis – eventually gathered outside parliament about 15 minutes later and staged an angry two-hour demonstration, shouting slogans against the government and Communications Minister Averoff Neophytou.
The protest took place while the House Communications Committee was convening to discuss the bill in question.
Protestors collared deputies arriving at the House to voice their complaints.
As Aristos Chrysostomou of DIKO walked in, some demonstrators shouted out: ” If you support us DIKO will do very well in the next elections.”
AKEL deputy George Lillikas said his party was on the side of taxi service owners.
The parties have not officially positioned themselves on the matter yet.
The protestors complained Neophytou had refused to listen to their side of the story.
The bill, which has been submitted to committee for discussion, provides that service owners can sell their taxi licences only to immediate family members. It also suggests that all new taxis have an ivory colour.
Neophytou has defended the ban on licence sales saying, ” taxi company owners often sell their licenses for £140,000 each” .
But the taxi owners argued yesterday that if they were not allowed to sell their licences they would end up with very little money.
” Everything changed after the September 11 attacks on the US. The tourism industry has suffered losses and so have we of course. We don’t have money to feed our families. We sometimes make £8 a day and we have no other pension than the money we get when we sell our taxi licences,”one angry protestor shouted.
Taxi company owners also opposed the idea of new taxis having an ivory colour, claiming existing vehicles would then be ” second class taxis” .
The government’s bill also calls on the Vehicle Licensing Authority to issue a number of new taxi licences, a development company owners fear will create a competitive environment in which they won’t be able to survive.
After the meeting of the Communications Committee, its chairman Nicos Pittokopitis of DIKO proposed a temporary solution to the company owners’ problems.
” I will suggest to the Licensing Authority to issue no more licences until February,”Pittokopitis said. ” And until then there will be meetings between the government, parliament and you in order to address these issues.”
Taxi service owners’ representative Kypros Andreou welcomed Pittokopitis’ proposal.
