'No' to strike
Strike action threatened by Oxford cab drivers over the introduction of CCTV cameras in their cars is unlikely, a driver’s union said last night. The move to introduce a pair of CCTV cameras into the back of all cabs has been rubber-stamped by Oxford City Council’s general purposes licensing committee.
The decision will mean all drivers taking up new licences will have until March to install cameras. Existing taxi drivers – both private hire and hackney cabs – will have until March 2015 to fit the £460 system. Taxi drivers will have to pay for the system, which is being introduced to improve driver and passenger safety.
Despite previous threats of strike action and a town hall demonstration held in March by the private hire drivers association over the cost and a belief customers would not welcome the cameras, private hire taxi firms backed the council.
Aaron Singh, manager of St Aldate’s firm 001, said: “It’s obviously an added fee on top of what drivers are already paying out at the moment, but in terms of safety it’s going to help keep drivers and passengers safe. “And if somebody accuses somebody of something it will provide some evidence when it’s one person’s word against another.” But he admitted: “I think there is a mixed feeling within the drivers.” He said none of the firm’s drivers wanted strike action.
Qasim Mohammed, of Royal Cars, said: “If the driver or the passenger gets injured it gives the police an easy lead to follow up.” Ghafoor Khan, chairman of the private hire drivers’ association, who in the past said 80 per cent of his union were against the cameras, declined to comment.
But some hackney cab drivers reacted with anger to the decision. Hackney cab owner and driver Bashir Ahmed, of Cowley, who has driven a cab for 22 years, said: “This has been forced on us without a proper consultation with the drivers. “Should your camera not be working you will be off the road.”
Gulzar Hussain, a hackney cab driver from Cowley, said: “We don’t need it. It’s a safe city, there’s no violence or fighting.” But City of Oxford Licensed Taxi Association secretary Alan Woodward said the CCTV system would protect drivers. He added: “Drivers won’t go on strike, I don’t think. They are all self employed – they would be shooting themselves in the foot.
“We’ve had quite a few false complaints against drivers and we feel we need to be armed with the correct tools to represent them when something like that happens. Some drivers were initially upset, but if you speak to the night-time drivers they say ‘I would feel safer with CCTV’. “We’ve negotiated that price down so that the council’s requirements of the system is reduced.”
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