Free market at its best

I REFER to “Giving up” (Front page, Oct 10) about taxis being returned to the lease companies by drivers due to competition from ride-hailing cars.

I sympathise hugely with the cab drivers as their livelihood is now affected, but I cry with joy and scream yippee to note that the taxi-owning companies are faced with idle cars and rotting investments.

For years these companies have been milking cab drivers with exorbitant daily charges which in turn made the drivers behave in a very customer-unfriendly manner towards passengers.

The companies did not contribute anything towards the taxi riding process apart from being able to exploit their position as owners of taxi licences given to them instead of drivers directly. What skills or qualification these companies have for operating public transport companies and supervising them when their priority is to just collect the monthly lease.

Have we not seen how deplorable some of these taxis were?

Uber and GrabCar have showed how to make money without fleecing passengers and these two organisations have also managed to control their drivers’ discipline and attitude by strict supervision and zero tolerance policies.

This is competition and free market working at its best.

Just Desserts Kuala Lumpur