NSW to Victorian Taxi Drivers’ Safety

NSW TAXI DRIVERS ASSOCIATION
INCORPORATING BAILEE DRIVERS, OWNER DRIVERS AND LESSEE DRIVERS
Inc.no. 9882558 ABN 98 653 928 763 PO Box 322, Alexandria NSW 2015

'A Fair Share of a Fair Fare'




NSW to Victorian Taxi Drivers’ Safety

Taxi drivers used to be expendable commodities like the ANZACS to the British. Greedy taxi networks and companies did nothing to save human lives. However, due to the courageous stand of a few dedicated taxi drivers, the NSW community got the Keatsdale Report, Dalziel Report and Cook Reports; all vital in achieving taxi driver safety. The grateful community of NSW gave enough money thorough the “$1.00 flag-fall rise” for taxi-drivers’ safety with the GPS and screen recommendations of the Keatsdale Report. The NSW government then extracted $40.00 a day from the vulnerable taxi drivers for their own safety. In return they got unworkable cameras and unreliable GPS systems. All of those little achievements are going to be buried by the partisan Madden Report- under the leadership of the NSW Labor Government. Tragically this $1000.00 per word David Madden Report is without any direction or vision whatsoever.


In the meantime two more taxi drivers were brutally murdered in NSW and many more were robbed and injured.


Today with our Victorian colleagues stood up for their own safety in facing down the police in Melbourne.


Channel Nine sinking to unfortunate disparagement and calculated derision of taxi drivers amounting to veiled racism could not resist the insult of describing the attention winning stunt on the part of the drivers of removing their shirts in the wintry weather thus " for reasons best known to themselves drivers removed their shirts". How puerile.


Penultimately what drivers want here in NSW and undoubtedly Victoria is workable legislation, regulation and mechanisms ensuring workers’ safety to save lives.



Faruque Ahmed
Media Manager, Mobile: 041 091 4118

Email: union_faruque@yahoo.com.au
Wednesday, April 30, 2008