Team Herald
PANJIM: Several thousand tourist taxis remained off the road of Friday as the battle between the State government and traditional taxi operators continues over the app-based taxi service GoaMiles. It is expected that the rent-a-car and rent-a-bike operators will join the flash indefinite strike on Saturday.
With the strike called late Thursday night, tourists and local travellers were caught unaware, and the government pressed additional KTC buses along with GoaMiles taxis across major places like airport, railway station, bus stops, etc.
North Goa Tourist Taxi Owners Association’s General Secretary Vinayak Nanoskar said the peaceful protest is symbolic. “We have remained off the roads to protest the government’s action of not scrapping GoaMiles. The protest is symbolic,” he told Herald.
“It is a peaceful protest but we are not responsible if anything bad happens. We are also not responsible if the yellow-white and black-yellow taxi are off the roads for a long period of time,” he added. While this sounded like a warning to the government, Nanoskar added that they will not resort to any violent means to get their demands fulfilled. According to Nanoskar, around 25,000 vehicles joined the protest.
While some tourist taxis were ferrying passengers on Friday, the union stated, they were unaware of the strike and joined the striking operators later. “We don’t want any inconvenience to the passengers but the government is not sensitive to our needs. We are traditional taxi operators. Why do they want to kill our business,” another taxi operator stated.
