This intrepid reporter
$100 to test their familiarity with should-know
places
TODAYonline
Weekend September 15, 2007
Christie Loh
[email protected]
I'VE fought many battles at the back of taxis. Bad smells,
frostbite, rudeness and speed demons.
But nothing in my routine of taking at least one cab daily baffles
me more than this: A cabbie's ignorance of where a basic
destination is. Not some good-to-know place, but one that is a
should-know.
Top-rate hotels such as The Ritz-Carlton and Conrad Hotel; the
country's multi-million-dollar arts centre The Esplanade; and
Dempsey Hill, one of the latest restaurant enclaves, are among
high-profile destinations and tourist attractions taught in the
vocational licence course administered by the Singapore Taxi
Academy (STA).
Yet I've met cabbies who had never heard of these places, let alone
were able to zip there in the shortest time possible which was
the reason I took a taxi in the first place rather than a bus or
train.
How did this group manage to get their licences? And what kind of
image will these clueless cabbies present of Singapore's tourism
industry?
When a visitor arrives whether by plane, coach, ferry or train
his first point of contact is often a taxi driver. Imagine his
frustration and what he will return home to tell his mates about
Singapore if the cabbie is unable to recognise a so-called tourist
attraction written about extensively in guidebooks.
As an example, the Britain-raised sister of a Singaporean friend
came home for a short stay some weeks back. Deciding one afternoon
to visit my friend's workplace at The Esplanade, the sister flagged
down a taxi. When the destination did not register with the cabbie,
the sister thinking her heavy Brit accent was in the way
whipped out what was said to be a well-known colloquial term for
The Esplanade. "The Durians, uncle," she said. The driver never
caught her drift.
In this case, language cannot be blamed since basic knowledge is
sorely lacking.
How entrenched is this problem? I'd say nearly two in 10 cabbies
have no clue where some should-know places are, according to a mini
poll conducted last week.
Mystery-commuter me put $100 in my purse and took a total of 19
taxis from different companies. In my two-day cabbing spree to a
list of should-know destinations in the morning, afternoon and
night, I met individuals united in their profession by the unhappy
circumstance of retrenchment or a lack of skills that makes it
tough to find a job with better hours and pay.
I also overdosed on cabbie-talk.
"Huh?" is their favourite retort when they don't know the place I
want to go to. Some will keep one eye and finger on the GPRS device
while driving as one cabbie did to locate the Red Dot Design
Museum and that's when I feared most for our lives.
If they're not comfortable in English, they may initially mishear
the name of a place Dempsey became "dentist" for a Comfort hirer
I met or you may not realise that Conrad is commonly pronounced
"Cornet".
Of the 19 cabbies, three did not recognise where I wanted to go.
That's a failure rate of 15.7 per cent or nearly two in 10
cabbies, if you like.
Some reasoned that it is increasingly difficult to keep up with
ever-changing Singapore buildings and road names.
Others pointed out that many new vocational licences are easily
attained because the supply of taxis outstrips that of drivers.
Some disagreed that the test is easy, saying their peers probably
failed several times before passing.
According to STA spokesman Tan How Ing, the average annual pass
rate since the academy started operations in 2003 is 88.6 per
cent.
When asked how STA ensures cabbies know the basic routes, Mr Tan
said all licensed taxi drivers, which numbered 85,000 as of May,
could look to the Street Directory as a reference.
But surely cabbies shouldn't need to flip through the Street
Directory for should-know routes.
So when we meet such drivers, how should we deal with them?
For one, snide remarks "You're a taxi driver, you don't know,
meh?" may not get us far or even solve the problem. As it is,
cabbies, especially the newbies, may already be highly strung from
having to stay on the roads for 10 hours or more at a stretch. It's
a lot of stress.
Silence, however, does not help either. If the cabbie can't even
get his basics down pat, then the passenger should not think twice
about lodging a formal complaint with the taxi company.
After all, cab passengers here are already a long-suffering lot. We
endure long waits for a cab during the morning and evening
rush-hours, before midnight, and when cabbies are changing
shifts.
The last thing we need is more aggro when we finally do get a
taxi.
