The Eindhoven Quality Taxi Foundation (SEK) wants the municipality to start checking again whether drivers driving around the city are affiliated with an authorised cab organisation (TTO). This has been mandatory since 2017, but many drivers flout that rule.
Both the municipality, the SEK, and the TTOs themselves play an indispensable role in enforcement. The municipality issues the permits. To be affiliated, drivers must have a seal of approval, issued by the SEK. Yet currently drivers who are not affiliated are driving around with impunity.
So the SEK and the TTOs want the municipality to sanction. Pieter Jan Biesheuvel, chairman of SEK: “There should be enforcement at the front end, by checking for having a license, and at the back end by being able to revoke the licence of an uncooperative TTO as the final piece of enforcement.”
Serious
Together with the TTOs, the SEK plans to take up so-called “mystery guest checks” again. However, those checks are labour-intensive and costly. “This means we can only do that if the municipality also takes its task seriously again,” says Biesheuvel. “But the municipality is not approachable at the moment. Nothing seems to be happening.”
Requests for facilities – such as improvements to stands or a toilet facility – are also not considered, Biesheuvel said. “Eindhoven wants to establish a zero-emission zone for cabs. Drivers are not informed and have no idea of the state of affairs. And also the information about, for example, cab stands at events is not coordinated and communicated poorly or late.”
Source: Studio040
Translated by Chaitali Sengupta
