EDITORIAL — Not just at the airport

There is a twist in the tale of the taxi driver who charged his passenger a whopping ?1,200 for a trip from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 3 to Terminal 2.

He said he was just trying to earn a decent pay because of a “60/40” racket allegedly run by the airport police. He said that under this modus operandi, airport police officers force taxi drivers to surrender 40% of their inflated fares, otherwise they would be hit with bogus violations or citations.

He said this led him, and other drivers, to overcharge passengers to make up for what they had to give.

“According dun sa kwento…ang nagpapatakbo ng raket dito ay ‘yung airport police. Sila ang nagiimpose ng mahal na rate at dun sa mamahaling rate na yun kumukuha sila ng 40% kaya ang naghihirap yung mga pasahero natin,” Department of Transportation Secretary Vince Dizon was quoted as saying in a Philstar.com report.

If true, this is plain extortion.

While proof has yet to be presented, the DOTr has already fired five airport police personnel anyway. Perhaps they saw the need to act quickly --and perhaps a little rashly-- given the poor reputation NAIA has following anomaly after anomaly and scandal after scandal in the past, a list too long to mention here.

Even if this extortion yarn is true, and indeed many are asking why this was only reported now and waiting for other taxi drivers to come forward and support this claim, this still doesn’t excuse the behavior of that taxi driver. Or of other taxi drivers who still don’t follow the taxi meter and insist on setting their own price whenever they are asked to go from point A to point B.

To be clear about this, that overcharging that some taxi drivers do doesn’t just happen at the airport and even without authority figures demanding a cut.

We hope this incident will encourage more passengers to complain against taxi drivers who overcharge their passengers, extortion or no.