Maldives Transport and Contracting Company (MTCC)’s CEO and Managing Director, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Retired) Ahmed Saudee has said that they will introduce an environmentally friendly taxi line where the electric vehicles (EVs) in the fleet can also be purchased by the general public. MD Saudee said this while answering a question from a shareholder about the taxi line at the company’s Annual General Meeting held last night at Nasandhura Baraza.
The government decided to provide taxi services in Male’ and assigned MTCC to establish a taxi line on February 12 this year. The government says this is a service being introduced with the aim of solving the difficulties in finding taxis, introducing a modern taxi service, and encouraging improvement in the quality of current taxi services.
Answering a question from a shareholder about the taxi line, MTCC’s Managing Director Ahmed Saudee said that although it was previously decided to start this service within July this year, it is now estimated that the taxi line service will begin within this coming August. He said this change occurred because the work of manufacturing the taxis is set to begin this month.
Saudee said that all expenses required to introduce an environmentally friendly taxi line will be borne by the government, and this service will not cause any financial harm to MTCC. “This is a 100% government-funded project assigned to MTCC. In the initial stage, the government has agreed to invest approximately 80 million rufiyaa with us. We took this on after conducting a very comprehensive feasibility study. This project will not result in any loss to MTCC,” said MTCC’s Managing Director Ahmed Saudee.
Saudee said that as part of the work being done to start the taxi line, they have now found a company to manufacture electric vehicles and have made a contract with that company. He noted that work is currently underway to provide advance payment to that party.
“We selected the party (EV manufacturing company) with an agreement to give MTCC the distributorship of this product. This means that if EV cars become common in the Maldives, if members of the general public want to buy the cars used in the taxi line fleet for personal use, we are paving the way for them to be available through MTCC’s trading, like how we sell Yanmar and Suzuki engines,” said MTCC’s Managing Director Ahmed Saudee.
While taxi service is an essential important service, the government says there is currently no way to hold taxis accountable. As a result, the service is not structured in a way that allows people to travel to all places at all times easily. Therefore, to solve this taxi issue, the government decided last July to provide taxi services to the public in the Male’ area under a proper arrangement as part of the “Male’ Fahi” project.
The government’s taxi line will use 100% environmentally friendly vehicles. This includes vehicles of 3 sizes, and this service will be provided 24 hours a day. While drivers will be hired as permanent employees to provide this service, drivers will also be hired to drive part-time. As taxi lines are a service introduced in many countries of the world based on a meter system agreed upon by both parties, the government says this will bring positive changes to the entire transport system.”
