From: garry sayed [garrysayed@yahoo.com.au]
Sent: Monday, 2 July, 2001 23:42
To: disabdis@humanrights.gov.au
Subject: wheelchair accessible taxis

2nd July,2001

Attention Mr Mason
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission

Dear Mr Mason

Thank you for the opportunity to send my submission on
the issue of wheelchair accessible taxis.

I am an operator of a wheelchair accessible taxi in
Sydney, and I am pleased to be in a situation where I
can voice an opinion from a different perspective. I
have given the matter considerable thought and I will
maintain my objectivity.

On the issue of response times I can confirm that some
people in wheelchairs wait considerably longer periods
than able bodied passengers, with the number and
variety of available vehicles this should not be the
case, these vehicles belong to various networks in
Sydney, and as a licensing requirement they must be
connected to the 0200 network operated by Taxis
Combined Services, who are responsible for delivering
the service. It is widely known in the taxi Industry
that if you belong to TCS you will get priority on the
work, therefore receive better quality work. Yet if
you belong to other networks ie; Legion, Premier, etc.
you are automatically down towards the end of the
queue,  and therefore will only be offered work that
is of a lessor monitory value. By offering inducements
to TCS drivers only, incense  drivers of the remaining networks, as a result of this unfair practice or treatment of non TCS driver, passengers in wheelchairs suffer the consequences by waiting considerably longer periods.

This is a problem that cannot be ignored, and can be
solved by simple strategies:

1/ To distribute the work fairly
2/ Global Positioning System to be used in allocating
a hiring to a suitable vehicle ( this is not the case
at the moment )
3/ Disallow private booking arrangements
4/ To offer reasonable inducements to every completed
hiring regardless of the driver's association or
affiliation to networks

Finally it is my opinion that increasing the number of
wheel chair accessible taxis would not translate in
better service levels, but rather would serve as an
avenue for more drivers to enter the wheel chair taxi
industry as a cheaper option with absolutely no regard
to the needs of the community they ought to dealing
with. Therefore the only way to improve service is to
provide fair incentives to the current drivers without prejudice.

Garry Sayed




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