Taxi drivers say ‘nay’ to petrol price hike

Taxi drivers' say petrol is preferred as engine of newer vehicle models running on NGV often encountered problems.

PETALING JAYA: Taxi drivers today protested against the recent petrol price hike, which they claimed would affect their income as it would drive up taxi maintenance cost and price of spare parts by 10 to 20 percent.

When asked on how the petrol price increase would affect taxi drivers since there were taxis that use NGV, the Metered Taxi Drivers Action Group chairman Amran Jan said some taxis, especially the newer taxis of Proton Persona and Proton Exora models, had to use petrol as these vehicles had to be often repaired when NGV was used.

“It is better to use petrol with the engine of these cars as we frequently encountered engine problems when these models are running on NGV, thus pushing up the repair costs to further erode our puny average income of RM2,500 a month,” Ahmad said during the protest led by him at Taman Bahagia LRT station.

The RON 95 petrol price went up by 20 sen at the stroke of midnight on Tuesday with RON 97 price hiking 15 sen on Thursday.

Besides calling on the government to reduce the RM64,000 price for Proton Exora modified for use as taxis, the group also urged the Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to increase the subsidy for taxi drivers.

They also want the government to either abolish or reduce the sales tax for taxi introduced in Budget 2011. They hoped that the government would provide them with more assistance in the coming budget.