The government has planned to introduce new taxi cabs for the capital and its vicinity before the Bengali New Year in mid-April.
The process of importing 60 new taxi cabs has already been completed. “The cabs will reach us within this March,” Communications Minister Obaidul Quader told reporters yesterday.
The new cabs are the first batch of 500 which were approved earlier by the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA).
The government hopes that induction of the new cabs would reduce transport crisis in the capital. Of the 500, half would run in Chittagong city. The first cabs in Dhaka will also run in the nearby highways and Narayanganj, Joydevpur, Mawa and Paturia.
Army Welfare Trust and Toma Construction and Company Ltd which earlier took part in a bidding process would import the cabs from the countries favourable to them, BRTA Director Engineer Saiful Haque said.
The newly-added taxi-cabs were licensed under air-conditioned and non-air-conditioned category as per “Taxi Cab Regulation Act, 2010.”
“We have relaxed terms and conditions to quicken import of the cabs for meeting the increasing demand of the city dwellers.
Considering passengers’ sufferings, the government has decided to introduce 1,000 new taxi cabs with modern facilities in the capital city for ferrying people smoothly,” the minister told reporters while visiting Shantinagar area.
He said: “No company has been given approval to import reconditioned cars older than three years as per law.”
The new cabs would be minimum 1500cc. The air-conditioned cabs would be yellow, the non-AC ones sky blue while those over 2000cc green coloured, the BRTA official said.
He also said, “The cabs will run as per the passengers’ direction, not upon the drivers’ whims. If the authorities find any problem in operation, the licensees will be seized.”
The BRTA is now preparing number plates and distributing smartcard driving licensees for the new taxi-cabs.
