Only two taxi drivers refused to accept me as a passenger this afternoon. They did so even before we started to negotiate fares. Many drivers working in the downtown area of KL don’t like to leave the honey pots -- places like Petaling Street and the Golden Triangle. There they can easily pick up tourists who have little idea of what the fares should be. They may have been counseled by their hotels to demand the use of the meter, but having been refused one or two rides they soon give up the idea and pay the asking price. After all, they are on holiday, this is a big city and those huge black clouds threaten a drenching at any moment. Of course, the drivers may just not have liked the look of my face. They may even have smelled my climbing shoes.
Taxi drivers here do have a hard time though, often working 12 hours a day or longer. Traffic is painfully slow and the roads convoluted and diseased with signals, pedestrian crossings and policemen. Encik Abdullah, who eventually did give me a ride to 1 Utama, the out of town shopping complex that is home to the superb Camp 5 climbing wall, was not a happy man. The air conditioning unit in his 5 year old Proton was still working, but the fan had just started making enough noise to make a small jet engine proud. He turned it off and we travelled with the windows down, huge splashes of rainwater occasionally forcing us to put them back up for a few minutes.
Abdullah was cross because he is responsible for all the maintenance costs on this car, and with 185,000 km on the clock, it is becoming a heavy burden. No surprises there then, but when you consider that he has to rent the car for MR55 a day from the taxi firm things become a little more clear. In Malaysia it is possible to buy a new Proton for about MR35,000 and the banks will extend loans for as long as 9 years and reasonable interest rates -- one reason that there are so many cars on the road here. If you earn MR1800, a fairly modest salary here, you can easily afford to buy a car, and if you can’t run to a new one, the second hand dealers offer no deposit purchase plans and will help you do the paperwork for the bank loan.
Paying MR1400 a month just for the rent of his aging vehicle, with maintenance and fuel costs on top, it is easy to see why Encik Abdullah is dissatisfied with his lot. If he could buy his own taxi he could afford to replace it every two years without paying out any more than he does now on rental. That is not possible though. The government only issues taxi licenses to companies and, in KL at least, the market is dominated by just a few large firms owned by well connected, and wealthy, businessmen. If the government would issue licenses to individual drivers they would substantially increase the drivers’ income, reducing the amount of time they would have to spend behind the wheel. The pay off would be a better service and safer roads. Probably no political benefit in that though.
Taxi drivers here do have a hard time though, often working 12 hours a day or longer. Traffic is painfully slow and the roads convoluted and diseased with signals, pedestrian crossings and policemen. Encik Abdullah, who eventually did give me a ride to 1 Utama, the out of town shopping complex that is home to the superb Camp 5 climbing wall, was not a happy man. The air conditioning unit in his 5 year old Proton was still working, but the fan had just started making enough noise to make a small jet engine proud. He turned it off and we travelled with the windows down, huge splashes of rainwater occasionally forcing us to put them back up for a few minutes.
Abdullah was cross because he is responsible for all the maintenance costs on this car, and with 185,000 km on the clock, it is becoming a heavy burden. No surprises there then, but when you consider that he has to rent the car for MR55 a day from the taxi firm things become a little more clear. In Malaysia it is possible to buy a new Proton for about MR35,000 and the banks will extend loans for as long as 9 years and reasonable interest rates -- one reason that there are so many cars on the road here. If you earn MR1800, a fairly modest salary here, you can easily afford to buy a car, and if you can’t run to a new one, the second hand dealers offer no deposit purchase plans and will help you do the paperwork for the bank loan.
Paying MR1400 a month just for the rent of his aging vehicle, with maintenance and fuel costs on top, it is easy to see why Encik Abdullah is dissatisfied with his lot. If he could buy his own taxi he could afford to replace it every two years without paying out any more than he does now on rental. That is not possible though. The government only issues taxi licenses to companies and, in KL at least, the market is dominated by just a few large firms owned by well connected, and wealthy, businessmen. If the government would issue licenses to individual drivers they would substantially increase the drivers’ income, reducing the amount of time they would have to spend behind the wheel. The pay off would be a better service and safer roads. Probably no political benefit in that though.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment