Fiji’s transport pie?

Who gets the plums in Fiji’s transport pie?

From ROBERT KEITH-REID in Suva

Fiji taxi owners have a long standing pet hate: U-drives, or if you prefer it, rental cars.

U-drives, they contend, take too much business that should rightfully be going to the taxis.

As a seeming afterthought they tend to add casually that it’s a pity that most rental cars are owned by foreign companies.

Actually, it’s the afterthought that is the real crux of the matter; the taxi men would like to be running big U-drive fleets themselves.

Hardly a session of the Fiji House of Representatives goes by without some backbench MP. usually of the Opposition, getting up to berate rental car barons on the taximen’s behalf.

One such occasion was in March, 1971, when Mr Chirag Ali Shah, a veteran of the Opposition, National Federation Party, which makes a vote-catching point of worrying about the worries of taxi owners, rose to demand a select committee to “in quire into the grievances of the taxi owners of Fiji”.

Were local people getting their “fair share” of the business Mr Shah wanted to know.

And, more to the point, to what extent had the transport industry in general and the rental and hire car trade in particular “fallen into the hands of expatriate firms or expatri ate companies”.

Answers to Mr Shah’s queries have come 4i years later with the pub lication of a select committee’s re port.

The information dug out by it was what everyone mostly knew already. The rental car business cer tainly is almost completely domi nated by outside interests.

But who runs practically all Fiji’s taxis and bus services? The commit tee’s figures speak for themselves.

Of 514 U-drives being operated by 27 firms at the end of 1973, 308 were owned by five European firms; 173 were owned by 15 Indian pro prietors; 12 by four Fijians; and 17 by joint Fijian-European or Fijian- Indian concerns.

Of 74 hire cars (rental cars in cluding a driver) 50 were owned by seven Europeans; 18 by 13 Indians, and five by two joint venture con cerns.

But if Indian transport operators

feel compelled to complain about European dominance of the U-drive business, other figures in the com mittee’s report are presumably grounds for complaint by non- Indians.

Of 734 buses in service at the end of 1973, 670 were owned by 58 Indian firms; 20 by two Fijian com panies, three by one European firm and 41 by a joint European-Indian company which has since reverted to 100 per cent Indian ownership.

Of 957 taxis in service at the end of 1973, 907 were owned by 664 Indian proprietors; 20 by 19 Fijians; six by five Europeans and 24 by seven other proprietors.

In view of the committee’s terms of reference it might be thought that such figures could have caused Indian taxi owners some embarrassment.

The committee was asked to de cide if existing legislation was ade quate to “secure reasonable oppor tunity for local people of all com munities to participate in the indus try”. And also if it was preventing monopolies “either local or expatri ate in any sector or sectors” of it.

But if the taxi men feel embarrass ment they have not shown any sign of it. In fact some were gratified by some of the committee’s 147 recom mendations.

One is that the Fiji Government should stop issuing any more U-drive car licences to foreign-controlled rental car companies, although those already established in Fiji should be allowed to keep the number they already have.

Licences for chauffeur-driven hire cars should be abolished since this type of rental car is merely “a dig nified form of taxi”, the committee says.

According to the committee, foreign involvement in transport has not harmed local interests so far.

But the time has come when locals have acquired all the expertise from foreign operators they need to be able to run road transport fleets efficiently themselves.

The nine-man committee, including six members of the House of Repre sentatives, is not entirely sympathetic to wailings from taxi owners. It sug gests that the taxi industry should take a look at its own faults.

Taxi businesses would be much more efficient if taxis had two-way

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radios operated through a co operative network, the committee says.

While some complaints from taxi men were justified, the committee comments, the best thing they could do for themselves would be to “escalate their standards and comoete with others in the industry on their own terms”.

In mulling over the lack of Fijians in the transport industry, the com mittee says this is due partly to lack of commercial know-how and capital.

A couple of Fiiian bus companies had run into disaster mainly because

no one knew out to keep the book; Fijians will have trouble breakim into a field in which others ar already entrenched, the committe warns.

The best way of getting Fijian into the industry as effective opei ators, it suggests, would be to se that taxi and bus service licences i

predominantly Fijian-populated dh

tricts go only to Fijians.

The terms of reference given th committee went beyond the trouble of taximen.

Local shipping services and an other matters affecting public tram port were within its purview as wel Even the little sugar cane trait which for years has carried passer gers free between Sigatoka and Eh was dealt with, and not kindly.

This service, said the committe* should be terminated forthwith be cause it originated in the days whe road traffic was practically nor existent.

The committee opposes nationalis ation of any transport services, pai ticularly bus services.

And it is about time, it says, th£ the small, commercial passengei carrying punts, which ski along Fiji inland waterways, are made to can lifejackets at all times and light when they move at night.

The committee came up with strong plea for the introduction c

compulsory breathalyser tests and

national 55 mph road speed limit.

This was because there was n doubt that too many road accident were the outcome of too much drin or speeding, or a combination c both.

Safety belts should also be a con pulsory feature of cars, it added actually, they already are. Since Jun< new cars have had to be fitted wit belts and it’s illegal for people nc to wear them.

There’s just one drawback. Whi with a long series of public meeting held by the committee throughout Fi the 95-page report must have been rather expensive one to compile.

It has appeared largely as a hii tory book. Many of its recommem ations have been put into force b the government on its own initiativi while others are policy mattei which the government has long sine ruled against adopting.

The report was tabled in th House of Representatives in Augui without a word of discussion.

It will, by now, have joined th growing pile of other parliamentar reports gathering cobwebs and mi dew on a shelf somewhere in Goven ment Buildings in Suva, hardly rea and probably disregarded.