Taxi fares to go up Monday

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

A taxi fare increase has been postponed until Monday to give taxi operators time to adjust their meters.

The chairman of the Jakarta chapter of the Organization of Land Transportation Owners (Organda), Herry Roti, said taxi operators agreed on Friday to delay the enforcement on the new fares until April 4.

"We are still not ready ... we need time to adjust the taxi meters. We agreed to implement the new fares beginning on Monday," Herry said after a meeting between Organda and taxi operators.

Teguh Wijayanto, a spokesman for the city's largest taxi operator, the Blue Bird Group, confirmed the fare increase had been delayed.

"It will take the entire weekend to adjust the meters in our 9,000 taxis and we want to apply the new fares simultaneously for the entire fleet. We expect all the work to be done by Monday," he told The Jakarta Post.

The city administration announced last weeks that taxi fares were being increased by 36 percent.

The flag fall will go up 33 percent to Rp 4,000 (45 US cents) from Rp 3,000, while the per-kilometer charge is being increased from Rp 1,300 to Rp 1,800. The waiting charge has been raised 38.5 percent from Rp 13,000 to Rp 18,000 per hour.

Governor Sutiyoso said on Friday the new fares announced by the administration were only ceiling fares.

"Operators can set their own fares in accordance with the quality of their services, as long as they are below the ceiling fares. That is fair for both the operators and passengers," he said.

The head of the Taxi Cooperative (Kosti), Muhammad Ali, said his company would not increase fares until it replaced its fleet of vehicles, most of which have been operated since the mid- 1990s.

"For the time being, we are not ready to enforce the new fares, until we replace our current cars with new ones," he told the Post.