COMMUNICATIONS and Works Minister Erato Kozakou-Markoulli is considering setting up a cab-share scheme that could be used by children and the elderly. The scheme would be presented to a delegation of taxi-drivers that the minister was scheduled to meet with today.
According to reports, the taxi-drivers were interested in hearing more about the ministry’s scheme, which is aimed at reducing the number of cars on the road.
Nobody doubts the minister’s good intentions, but we think that very little thought has been put into this scheme, which would not only require NASA-type logistics to work, but also a developed sense of community spirit on the part of the drivers; and community spirit is not something our cab-drivers are renowned for.
Does the minister seriously think that cabbies would pick up four kids from four different points in the same neighbourhood and take them to four different destinations promptly for a single fare?
We suspect this impracticable scheme is nothing more than an attempt to appease angry taxi-drivers who have threatened to block airports, ports and roads if the ministry did not start a dialogue about the problems facing the profession within a week.
The blackmail was announced last Thursday and Kozakou-Markoulli gave in to it by agreeing to meet the taxi-drivers today.
And as if giving in to the blackmail was not bad enough, she will also try to appease them with an ill-conceived scheme that would probably cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of euro.
Considering the ludicrous demands of the Famagusta district taxi-drivers – they want bus fares to be increased and bus routes to be reduced, as well as state compensation for leaving the profession – the meeting should not even have been held.
The drivers should have been told that the minister could not be blackmailed into meeting anyone, instead of rewarding the bullying behaviour with a scheme supposedly aimed at helping their business.
There are many people who have been hard-hit by the recession. Should they also threaten to block the ports and airports in the hope that the government would come up with a scheme to help them? A responsible government would have told the cab drivers that their demands were totally unreasonable and could not even be discussed.
It would also have warned them to abandon any plans to block access to ports or airports as this constituted a violation of the law.
Unfortunately, this is not the style of the populist Christofias government which sees nothing wrong with appeasing bullies and blackmailers.
