The association Élite Corsaris d’Eivissa has collected about a thousand license plates of vehicles suspected of illegal taxi services so far this season. According to its spokesman, Lolo Ruiz, this does not mean that there are a thousand people who are dedicated to intrusion, but that 1,000 cars that may be pirates have been detected.
“We are adding license plates to the blacklist and, every two weeks, we meet with the Consell de Ibiza and pass them on,” says Ruiz, who adds that there are many people who are changing vehicles. “We are encountering lifelong pirates, black vans and also some VTCs that do not do their job properly because, for example, they do not fill out the route sheet. Hence the volume of license plates is so high,” he laments.
In this regard, the spokesman for Élite Corsaris, which brings together part of the sector on the island, recalls that they met two weeks ago with the Consell to “demand greater control” of the situation, but in his opinion, the meeting was not fruitful. “They told us that they have about 70 complaints filed this season, but we do not see that they are having an effect,” he says.
In fact, Ruiz is aware that fining a pirate cab 6,000 euros “is not enough”, even if the vehicle is removed because, in many cases, they are old cars that have little value; plus many of the drivers are foreigners and “it is certain that they do not pay” the fines.
Consell de Ibiza on illigal taxis
For their part, the Consell de Ibiza recognizes that the lack of taxis to meet the high demand “contributes to the emergence of illegal supply”. Even so, they explain that from the list of license plates that the association has sent them “not all of them are illegal” and remind that “there are complementary transport authorizations to go to and from some establishments”.
“It has reached us that, at the beginning of the season and due to the lack of taxis, some business owners were forced to use their own resources to prevent their clients from missing planes”, they indicate in reference to the complaints of hoteliers about the lack of means to get to the airport. In this line, Anna Rosie Isabelle wrote a few days ago on Twitter that, after three hours waiting for a taxi after leaving a nightclub, “a security guard took us home for 80 euros”.
From the Consell they insist that the license plates collected by Élite Corsaris are not sufficient evidence, but all possible data is used to pursue illegals. “We take into account all the information provided by cab drivers to pursue the pirates, but we must take into account the complexity of proving this illegal activity. The client must recognize that they have paid for the service, too,” they stress.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.