Madrid (EFE).- Madrid taxi drivers have returned to the streets this Thursday, for the fourth time so far this year, to demand that the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, reverse the “liberal and deregulation of the sector, which does not benefit the self-employed but rather large companies”.
This was expressed by the president of the Professional Taxi Federation of Madrid (FPTM), Julio Sanz, at the start of the demonstration to which 6,000 vehicles were summoned this afternoon that were circulating slowly through the central lanes of the Castellana from Plaza Castilla to the headquarters of the Ministry of Transport, in Maudes street.
Last December, in the debate on the state of the region, President Díaz Ayuso announced that her government was finalizing the regulations for taxis and Chauffeured Transport Vehicles (VTC) with “important improvements for license holders and for users”, which would improve billing and service.
According to Sanz, “the aim is to deregulate and deregulate a service such as the taxi so as not to have to regulate the leasing vehicle with driver, and that this be the law of the jungle, open to large companies.”
“The vast majority of us are self-employed, holders of a single license who only aspire to continue working under the same conditions. And the 500,000 users that we transfer daily do not benefit at all from this structural change that no one, except four or five businessmen, asks that it be changed ”, he added.
Regarding contacts with the Ministry, “since the last meeting on February 15, they have not seen us other than to discuss the theft of catalysts in the streets of Madrid, something that worries us, but so far there has been no contact to deal with the regulations. We are still waiting”, said Sánz.
After recalling that the referendum held among taxi drivers last November has given “overwhelming results against that text”, Sanz has criticized that for the VTC “there is no sanctioning regime. In other words, a law that has been in force for months has meant that millions of services carried out by VTCs do not have any control from the Community of Madrid”, something that is being debated today in the Madrid Assembly.
“We are in the same situation as in the mobilizations of January 12 and 24, and February 15. We continue at the expense and pending of the meetings of the Governing Council of the Community of Madrid every Wednesday, to see this text that threatens us with this deregulation and the inaction of the sector”.
With these protests “we ask that they leave us as we are, we do not ask for anything else. There is a threat of promoting speculation, an irruption of large companies in the sector”, something that “users will not do well and that is why we continue on the street”.
Today, in the plenary session of the Madrid Assembly, “the amendments to the entire law that enables the VTCs, raised by the political groups, are also being seen.”
For its part, the Government of President Ayuso defends that, with the new regulations, taxis will be able to circulate 24 hours a day, every day of the week, and car-sharing services will be authorized, thus reducing the price for each traveler.
With the time freedom, taxi drivers will be able to earn up to 60% more per month for a license and create some 3,000 new jobs, according to the Madrid president, and in addition to making regulations more flexible by facilitating the hiring of drivers, the number will rise from three to 50 autotaxi licenses per holder.