A passenger haggles with a cabby over fare in the capital yesterday, although cabbies are supposed to charge as per meter. The import of poor quality vehicles has left taxicab owners facing huge debts, while travellers are being forced to endure high fares and a disastrous level of service.Photo: STARThe importation of poor quality vehicles has left taxicab owners facing huge debts while travelers are being forced to endure high fares and a disastrous level of service.
Of the 11,000 cabs with permits, mainly in Dhaka, only 3,000 are currently in operation, according to the Bangladesh Association of Taxicab Operators (Batco).
The remaining vehicles are off the road due to a lack of adequate spare parts and fundamental weaknesses in a large number of the 7,000 Indian produced cabs that were imported to the country in 2003, the Batco said yesterday.
The failure to keep their vehicles on the road and the mounting cost of repairs has meant many taxicab owners are struggling to pay back the huge debts they incurred in importing the cabs. Their bad financial status also makes it very difficult to finance any new investment in the sector.
Batco President Abdul Mannan Chowdhury (Khoshru) said, "A section of car importers in collaboration with the then government in 2003 dumped low quality Indian cabs in the local market."
"These were cabs that the Indian government had banned from plying in their own country," he said.
He said the situation was made worse when the cabs were converted to run on CNG, because they were not strong enough to carry the CNG kits that include a heavy gas storage canister.
Added to this, the local market has been flooded with low quality spare parts making it increasingly difficult to keep the cabs in good service.
Hijacking and police seizure of vehicles were also serious problems, Khoshru said.
Engineer Habib Ahsan, managing director of Satarupa Taxicab, said, "I was an engineer with reputation of a good industrialist, when several bank lenders advised me to buy taxicabs. I bought 20 Indian cabs, financing the purchase on bank loans," he said.
"After working for about six months the cabs started to develop problems and I could no longer continue to make regular repayments on my loan.
My good reputation has been ruined as the bank is now treating me as a thief due to my failure to pay back my loans on time," he added.
Taxicab operators also attacked what they described as poor policy guidelines in the sector, especially restrictions on the use of reconditioned cars as taxis.
At the Batco press conference held in the capital, operators demanded that banks write off parts of the original loans taken to finance the imported cabs, and that fresh loans be made available to operators.
