Taxi drivers call a strike for February 3

Taxi drivers said on Wednesday said they would strike islandwide on February 3 over disagreements with authorities on licence usage and illegal taxis.

In an announcement, urban taxi drivers said they decided to strike after no consensus had been reached at the meeting they had earlier in the day with the board of the road transport department’s licensing authority as regards the “biggest problem that plagues the industry”.

The taxi drivers had in the past staged strikes over what they perceive as the reluctance of state authorities to tackle the problem of illegal taxi drivers, while licensed taxi drivers are being targeted and slapped with fines for not having their licence and identification visible in their vehicles.

At the meeting, taxi drivers said that they were shocked to hear the licensing authority’s board claim that officials of the department have never reported licensed taxi drivers and they never processed any cases concerning fines.

“In previous announcements, we had stressed the licensing authority’s aggressive stance against us, and today’s facts simply confirm what we had said before,” the group said.

They said they would go on a strike on February 3 island wide, including outside ports and airports, demanding the amendment or abolition of the terms concerning the use of the taxi licence for a “fair and equal treatment which will ultimately lead to a reduction of illegality”.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.