On February 15, the Legislative Council Panel on Transport discussed increasing fines and penalties for illegal carriage of passengers for hire or reward, and ways to enhance taxi service quality by increasing fines and penalties on bad drivers.

One area which seems very one-sided, is that the owner of a private car stands to have his car seized for up to six months, even if he was unaware that the vehicle was being used for the illegal carriage of passengers, because he may have failed to take action to prevent his car being used in such a way.

However, a taxi owner can rent his taxi out to a taxi driver regardless of how bad that taxi driver is. The owner does not have to take any preventive measures and will not face the penalty of having his taxi seized for six months – one less reason for a taxi owner to put pressure on the taxi drivers to maintain or even increase the standards of our taxi service.

The Transport Department should insist that taxi owners check the traffic convictions of the taxi driver they rent to and, should an owner allow a bad driver to rent their vehicle without advising or retraining that driver, then that taxi should be detained for six months upon conviction of the bad driver.