Goa (INDIA): India's most sought after beach tourist destination, Goa, could just be compelled to wage a war of sorts on its rogue cabbies. Concerned by decades of rogue taxi operations, who have been fleecing the millions of tourists, as well the indigenous population by functioning without meters and charging passengers by “will and instinct”, the Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) is now lobbying with the newly elected chief minister Manohar Parrikar to bring order the rogue cabbies to book. “For years now taxi operators have gotten away with murder. Sometimes, for even the smallest of distances with Panaji, they charge more than Rs 300, which is almost unreal,” GCCI president Manguirish Pai Raikar told Bikyamasr.com. Raikar said that the new Manohar Parrikar led government had been petitioned by the taxi operators to sort out some of their internal issues and that this was the best time for the government to bring order and sanity to taxi fares. “The government has to insist on meters. This is a tourist place, but that does not mean you fleece them like this? Taxi drivers are supposed to be the brand ambassadors of Goa, but they are the ones who virtually put the tourists off the moment they land in Goa,” Raikar said. Raikar's concern is put in perspective by the ordeal of Jayesh Patel, a medical representative who came to Goa from Mumbai on a holiday and alighted at the Dabolim international airport, located 30 kms from Panaji “The taxi charged me Rs 650 ($ 13)! From the airport to Panaji. I checked the standard fare and it was Rs 422 ($ 8.44) only. Then from Panaji to Calangute beach which is around 20 kms I was asked to pay Rs 800 ($ 16) because it was around 9 pm,” Patel said. In 2011, the Goa government started tinkering with the idea of fitting cabs with global positioning system (GPS) devices and electronic meters. “We are working in coordination with the transport department to install GPS transmitters and electronic meters to make sure that the tourists have an enjoyable experience here while traveling,” tourism director Swapnil Naik had promised in July last year. But the innovation simply did not take off. A sensitization drive starring one of Goa's best known theater actors Prince Jacob trying to instill the ‘Atithi Devo Bhava' (Guest is like God) values in the cab operators also appears to have fallen on deaf ears. Raikar said that the GCCI was willing to work on sensitization programs as well as lobbying with the Goa government for subsidizing the meters to be fitted on the cabs. “The current lawlessness as far as taxi fares are concerned has to change, if Goa is to retain its name as a top and safe tourism destination. We have to work at standardizing the fares and insist on functioning cab meters,” Raikar said. Goa receives 2.6 million tourists annually out of which half a million are foreigners.
