Advertisement
Advertisement
Coronavirus pandemic
Get more with myNEWS
A personalised news feed of stories that matter to you
Learn more
The taxi trade is one of the most obvious economic casualties on Hong Kong’s streets during the health crisis. Photo: Robert Ng

Rough ride for Hong Kong cabbies: incomes shrink as passengers stay home to avoid coronavirus

  • Afraid of being infected by strangers, several cabbies stop driving
  • Night-time shock for driver robbed of HK$500 and injured by rider with a knife

A week after being robbed and injured in his taxi, cabby Tom Ku Ching-tung, 35, gets anxious each time he stops to pick up a passenger.

The night-shift driver was in Sham Shui Po on April 2 when a middle-aged man wearing a mask got in and asked to go to Tai Kok Tsui.

“As I neared the destination, he suddenly asked me to stop,” Ku recalls. “Then he pulled out a fruit knife and said, ‘Robbery! Take out all your money, quick!’

“I told him I had only HK$500 and he said, ‘All right’. Then I realised his knife had accidentally cut off the tip of my middle finger. He said, ‘Sorry’, before he took the cash and ran away.”

Tom Ku was robbed in his own cab near Tai Kok Tsui in April. Photo: Nora Tam

It was the first time in five years of driving a taxi that Ku was robbed, and he needed eight stitches for his wound. “My hands were shaking uncontrollably the whole night. I was horrified, and very angry at being injured,” he says.

Despite fears concerning the coronavirus outbreak, Ku returned to work as he has bills to pay, including HK$13,000 in monthly rent for the flat he shares with his girlfriend. It is a struggle, he says, as his monthly income has been halved to about HK$10,000.

Hong Kong’s 40,000 active cabbies are deemed a high-risk group in the Covid-19 outbreak because of their frequent contact with strangers. By Thursday, the city had recorded 973 confirmed cases, two of whom were taxi drivers.

Domestic violence cases up sharply in Hong Kong since start of pandemic

Ng Kwan-sing, vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Taxi Council, says cabbies have already been hit hard by the months of social unrest since June last year, and the Covid-19 outbreak has made things worse.

“A lot of drivers, I reckon about 10 per cent to 20 per cent, have refused to work for fear of contracting the virus,” he says.

Those still at work, like Ku, have seen their income halved from about HK$20,000 to about HK$10,000 per month, he adds, and many now have to dip into their savings to make ends meet.

The city has been at a virtual standstill since late January after the government introduced a host of measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Schools have closed, and a growing list of leisure venues, including gyms, cinemas, pubs, karaoke lounges and mahjong parlours, as well as beauty and massage parlours, have been told to shut for 14 days. Many employers have also told their staff to work from home.

For cabbies, all that has meant fewer people on the move.

AutoX launches ‘Asia’s largest robotaxi operation centre’ in Shanghai

According to official statistics, Hongkongers took an average of 854,500 taxi journeys a day in 2019, down almost 4 per cent from 889,000 trips in 2018. In January, when the Covid-19 outbreak hit the city, the number of daily taxi rides dropped to 808,000 a day, down by about 7.6 per cent from 874,100 rides per day a year earlier.

Ng said many drivers were now wary of going to risky pickup points such as the airport, border checkpoints and hospitals. “But these are the places where cabbies could have good business,” he says.

Ku says he shuns those spots, for fear of being infected, but remains worried about the people who enter his taxi. “Apart from wondering if they are carrying the virus, now I also wonder if they might be robbers,” he says.

After he was robbed, he thought about the man who held him up for just $500 and if he was driven by desperation.

“I told myself that if he committed robbery because of poverty, I would forgive him. The recent economic meltdown may force a lot of jobless people to resort to crime,” he says.

To protect himself, from the virus and future attacks, he is considering installing a plastic screen behind the driver’s seat as well as more cameras in the taxi.

Henry Cheng Kwok-chuen, 60, is among the cabbies still at work, six months after he was in the news over an incident in Sham Shui Po, during anti-government protests there.

Henry Cheng was beaten up after his car went off the road and hit a group of protesters. Photo: Edmond So

On October 6, he was pulled out of his taxi and beaten after his car went off the road and hit a group of protesters, leaving a woman injured.

The crowd accused him of deliberately ploughing into the protesters, a charge he denies. Democratic Party lawmaker Ted Hui Chi-fung has filed a private prosecution accusing him of dangerous driving.

The beating left Cheng with fractured ribs and injuries to his head, face, arms and legs. “I’m still not fully recovered,” he says. “My legs are weak and I still have pain in my back. But I need to keep working or I won’t be able to meet my household expenses.”

Hong Kong has turned into a dead city when night falls. I feel an overwhelming sense of helplessness
Andrew Ng, taxi driver

Married with two adult children, he says he earned about HK$15,000 a month before the Covid-19 outbreak. His income has fallen by less than 20 per cent since the pandemic began, and he is not as badly off as other cabbies because he mainly takes bookings from a premium taxi firm, which offered him a big cut to the rent he pays on the car.

To protect himself from the virus, he wears a mask and gloves, disinfects his cab frequently and leaves the windows open.

Night-shift cabby Andrew Ng, 36, also keeps himself protected, and wears a respirator mask similar to those worn by frontline protesters.

“So far I haven’t had any negative feedback from my passengers. Many even praised me for being cautious,” he says.

He cleans his cab regularly, even spraying disinfectant after dropping off each passenger, and also keeps his windows open.

He admits that he is put off when people who are not wearing masks hail his cab. “Most of them are foreigners,” he says. “To protect myself, there have been several times when I refused to take them.”

Single and living with his girlfriend, Ng says his income has been halved to about HK$10,000 and he needs to keep working.

“Hong Kong has turned into a dead city when night falls,” he says. “I feel an overwhelming sense of helplessness.”

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Anxious cabbies chase fares in city at virtual standstill
Post