The President of TaxisRAM – Association of Taxis and Other Transport, met last week with the Regional Secretary for Equipment and Infrastructures, Pedro Fino, to discuss issues such as tariff updates and the regulation of car rental companies.
After the meeting with Pedro Fino, who oversees the land transport sector, Paulo Pereira, President of TaxisRAM, said that the concerns of taxi drivers were heard and that the Government is available to find solutions, even if it is currently limited by being in ‘caretaker’ phase.
One of these issues was the current rent-a-car regulations. Paulo Pereira said that the Regional Government conveyed its willingness to bring to the discussion with the Assembly of the Republic the possibility of working on the legislation on car rental companies. Limiting the number of vehicles is one of the measures that Paulo Pereira believes are necessary to ensure fair competition with the rest of the transport sector.
Another issue concerns the updating of pricing agreements. The leader of TaxisRAM stresses that the current convention expired on December 31, 2021, and that the values have not been updated since 2014.
“We are working with values that are already 10 years old. It doesn’t make sense,” he said, explaining that the goal is to adopt the same price convention used on the continent, with some changes to respond to the specificities of the Region.
“We talked about the issue of the single tariff, port and airport tariffs. This has all been discussed in several meetings, but the Government has been slow to move forward with this. It was explained to us by the secretary that there was a desire to implement the new convention, but that the Regional Government is in ‘caretaker’ mode and at this time there is no immediate need to agree on new tariffs,” added Paulo Pereira, stating that taxi drivers understand the justifications and are therefore willing to wait for the new executive to “continue the work that has already been done.”
Samantha Gannon
info at madeira-weekly.com
