WORLDWIDE from USA
STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL PLANS TO SUE NYC OVER TAXI MEDALLIONS
New York’s attorney general announced plans on Thursday 20 February to sue New York City for $810 million for inflating the price of taxi medallions, which were marketed as a sure-fire investment before ride-hailing apps upended the taxi industry. NBC reports that Attorney General Letitia James filed a notice of claim against the city, which she said auctioned off medallions at artificially high prices between 2004 and 2017 and continued to market the medallions at overvalued rates even after internal reports raised warnings about inflated values. “Government should be a source of justice, not a vehicle for fraud- ulent practices,” said James, a Democrat. The city made $855 million on sales of medallions, the licences that allow a person to operate a yellow cab, between 2002 and 2014 when it stopped holding medallion auctions. The value of a medallion has plummeted from over $1 million in 2013 to less than $200,000 now, leaving thousands of owner-drivers buried in debt. Uber and other ride-hailing apps have taken much of the blame for the crash in the medallion market but critics have also blamed the city and lenders who pushed immigrant drivers into risky loans. City officials adopted a moratorium on new licences for Uber and other for-hire vehicles in 2018 and extended it last year, but they have not yet taken action to provide relief to debt-ridden drivers. A task force that studied the taxi industry released a report in Jan- uary recommending that the city recruit “mission-driven” investors to help bail out struggling medallion owners. No action has been taken on the recommendations yet. Freddi Goldstein, a spokeswoman for Democratic Mayor Bill de Bla- sio, said the mayor and his administration have spent six years “putting money back into the pockets of drivers and attempting to curb the harm from Uber years before anyone else wanted to recognise the threat.” She added, “If the attorney general wants to launch a frivolous investigation into the very administration that has done nothing but work to improve the situation, this is what she’ll find.” But Bhairavi Desai, the executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a labour organisation for drivers, hailed the attor- ney general’s announcement. She said restitution from the city “is long overdue and we hope just the beginning as we continue our fight for debt forgiveness and lesser monthly mortgages.”
of rider discrimination, urging anyone who experiences such an inci- dent to alert the city through. “Not in our city. Fare refusal is illegal - we won’t stand for discrimination against our Asian American com- munity,” she said in a tweet. “Fear is the enemy, not our neighbours.” Some ride-share drivers have told The Post that they’ve been avoid- ing certain neighbourhoods with large Chinese populations out of fear of catching the new virus, despite there being no confirmed cases in New York. The TLC fines drivers $500 over their first incident of discrimina- tion, with the possibility of their licence getting revoked if they continue to discriminate, according to its site.
from Singapore
CORONAVIRUS: MORE RELIEF FOR SINGAPORE CABBIES
OUTRAGE DUE TO NYC CABBIES AVOIDING CHINESE PASSENGERS
Mayor Bill de Blasio says he is furious at revelations in a New York Post report that city cabbies and ride-share drivers are avoiding Chinese passengers over fears of the coronavirus. “This is OUTRAGEOUS,” de Blasio tweeted. “Let me be perfectly clear: there WILL be consequences for anyone caught taking part in this kind of cruel racial profiling. To our Asian American community: your city has your backing and this discrimination will NOT be tol- erated,” he added. The Taxi and Limousine Commission chief also slammed the reports
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More financial help is on the way for Singapore’s cabbies who have been affected by the coron- avirus outbreak, with market leader Comfort- DelGro announcing about $10 million in rental rebates last month. This is on top of the $77 million package that the Govern- ment announced to help cabbies and private hire drivers, to which Singa- pore’s largest taxi oper- ator is contributing $18 million. ComfortDelGro said a daily rental rebate of $16.50 will be given to each taxi until the end of March, translating to $660 per taxi for the period. This will be followed by a daily $10 rebate for the entire month of April. More may be done depending on how the coron- avirus situation unfolds, it added. In total, ComfortDelGro cabbies and their relief drivers will receive $28 million over the next three months. The additional assistance comes amid falling demand for taxi services, brought on by the virus scare which has put many people off discretionary trips and triggered a plunge in tourist arrivals. Also, with more companies allowing their staff to work from home, cabbies have seen their income drop by 20 to 30 per cent. ComfortDelGro Taxi chief executive Ang Wei Neng added: “We have been monitoring the situation very closely and have received feed- back from our cabbies who have been asking for help. We felt that we needed to do more.” Other taxi companies pointed out that their rental rates were already lower than ComfortDelGro’s. Ms Jasmine Tan, general man- ager of Trans-Cab, the second-largest operator there, said the company will lower its daily rental by $5. Grab also announced addi- tional aid for its drivers. It said eligible drivers will receive up to $85 a week to supplement their earnings between March 2 and May 30. Henry Tay, 49, driver for ComfortDelGro, said: “I appreciate the company’s gesture, but the problem is not rental, but a huge drop in passenger numbers. It became worse after reports of cabbies catching the virus.”
A taxi driver having his temperature checked at the ComfortDelGro office
MARCH 2020
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