A total of 118 taxi drivers around the Royal Grand Palace area in Bangkok have been arrested and fined up to Bt1,000 for allegedly cheating passengers, especially foreign tourists, police said on Friday.
Metropolitan Police Bureau’s traffic police chief Pol Maj General Nithithorn Jintakanon told a press conference that 73 cabbies were charged with violating the Vehicle Act 1979.
Thirty were charged with refusing passengers, 17 for failing to use a taxi metre for fare, three using a wrong vehicle as a taxi while another 23 committed various other offences under the act.
Forty-five cabbies were also arrested for violating the Road Traffic Act 1979.
Police also announced that the Department of Land Transport’s hotline 1584 had received 43,804 complaints about taxi services in 2016, and 43,254 complaints in 2017, which soared to 48,223 complaints in 2018.
The five top complaints were: taxis refusing to take passengers, drivers acting impolitely towards passengers, taxi driving recklessly and dangerously, driver failing to use the fare meter, and taxi failing to take passengers to agreed destinations.
