Panaji: When Nishant Fernandes arrived at Goa International Airport to drop off his brother, instead of bidding a proper farewell, Fernandes hustled his brother out of the car and raced towards the exit, his mind more on the ticking clock. It was in vain. A haphazardly parked tourist taxi blocked his path and Fernandes had to fork out Rs 85 for exceeding the time allowed for passengers to alight from the car.
Not content with a virtual monopoly over the tourist taxi business in the state, taxi operators have also engineered a situation where they have cornered nearly all the space in the arrival and departure lanes at Goa International Airport.
So while the common man gets five measly minutes to bid his loved ones goodbye, taxi operators can park their cars for hours on end as they haggle with arriving tourists and passengers. And, yellow and black cabs and the tourist taxis do not pay a single rupee for occupying the precious parking space.
"At any point if you visit the airport, taxis are just parked there jamming all the access points," an official who did not wish to be named said. "They do not pay a single rupee to the contractor and they are not answerable to anybody and if this is not a mafia, then what is?"
Goa Traffic Police and the department of transport turn a blind eye to the rampant menace while Airports Authority of India (AAI) claims that the matter is out of its jurisdiction.
The problem has its roots in 2001 when AAI urged the government to allocate land for a taxi stand around the airport. As the new integrated terminal was being built, the existing black and yellow taxi stand was demolished with the expectation that a new taxi stand would come up. Though the state government did notify land for parking, the land was de-notifed in 2012.
29/01/18 Newton Sequeira/Times of India
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Not content with a virtual monopoly over the tourist taxi business in the state, taxi operators have also engineered a situation where they have cornered nearly all the space in the arrival and departure lanes at Goa International Airport.
So while the common man gets five measly minutes to bid his loved ones goodbye, taxi operators can park their cars for hours on end as they haggle with arriving tourists and passengers. And, yellow and black cabs and the tourist taxis do not pay a single rupee for occupying the precious parking space.
"At any point if you visit the airport, taxis are just parked there jamming all the access points," an official who did not wish to be named said. "They do not pay a single rupee to the contractor and they are not answerable to anybody and if this is not a mafia, then what is?"
Goa Traffic Police and the department of transport turn a blind eye to the rampant menace while Airports Authority of India (AAI) claims that the matter is out of its jurisdiction.
The problem has its roots in 2001 when AAI urged the government to allocate land for a taxi stand around the airport. As the new integrated terminal was being built, the existing black and yellow taxi stand was demolished with the expectation that a new taxi stand would come up. Though the state government did notify land for parking, the land was de-notifed in 2012.
29/01/18 Newton Sequeira/Times of India
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