Citizens waste more time at taxi stands

SHILLONG: Despite the presence of several local taxis, the transport system in the city is still far from satisfactory as public have to spend a good amount of time waiting in the stoppages daily.
Be it Police Bazar or Jhalupara, Nongthymmai or Raj Bhawan point, the sight of people waiting for journey to various destinations is common.
The reasons could be attributed to many factors such as taxis stuck in traffic, unpleasant attitude of local taxi drivers, overcharging and others.
Recently, sleuths of Transport department had conducted an exercise and forced local taxis to accept all passengers but as the exercise had ended, things are back to normal.
On the other hand, cabbies say that sometimes there is shortage of local taxis in certain junctions since many of the cabbies remain stuck in traffic jams.
On the other hand, behaviour of many taxi drivers are also questionable.
On Wednesday afternoon, it was seen that a local taxi driver in Jhalupara dressed shabbily and drunk was not allowing passengers to talk over their phone inside his taxi.
As people’s phone kept on ringing, the driver was giving angry looks to all the passengers and was also shouting at the passengers for using their phones.
When contacted, an official of the Regional Transport Authority said that the Police conduct awareness programmes for the drivers from time to time.
When asked if there is any proposal to make it mandatory for the cabbies to wear uniforms, the official said that there is no plans as of now but the matter can be discussed in the next meeting of the authority.