Land Transport Authority (LTA) CEO Irimaia Rokosawa has reiterated that the authority must ensure adequate transportation is always available to the public.
Mr Rokosawa told a public consultation review of taxi permits and process operations in Lautoka that this would counter complaints from the public that services are neglected early morning or in the afternoon.
“For us, it is a mandatory imperative to ensure we improve or come up with a better system,” he said.
“There was also an open rank taxi system introduced. It had its pros and cons. We’ve learned from that, and through the consultations and feedback from stakeholders on how best we can improve moving forward.
“But very importantly is that we must ensure that whatever system we come up with must ensure that the system’s intent comes into fruition, which is the delivery of service to the general public.”
Mr Rokosawa said certain Fijians had met the requirements of holding a taxi permit but did not have any intent to run a taxi business.
“They were issued the permits, but they just showed it off and it defeated the whole purpose of issuing the permits in the first place.
“This is something we are looking into. Those who have the intent and have been running some sort of taxi business to ensure that while we issue the permit, it also addresses the illegal operations
“Right now, we are issuing permits on the left, yet those who are illegal are still running on the right.
“So, we need to collect those dots and have a system.”
Mr Rokosawa said the previous system was done via a taxi permit barrel draw.
The LTA has issued a total of 8090 taxi permits to date – Central and Eastern divisions account for 4678, the Western Division 2893 and the Northern Division 519.
