Taxi cabs sans sequence numbers face apprehension

CEBU – Operators and drivers of taxis without the Taxi Sequence Numbering System be warned; your days are numbered.

Taxis not registered under the TSNS will be apprehended starting this week.

“Dakop na,” said Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board-7 regional director Romulo Bernardes in an interview with The FREEMAN yesterday.

The deadline for taxi operators in the region to register their units ended last Friday.

Bernardes said that out of the 6,137 taxi units in the region, only 5,680 have registered and 457 remained unregistered.

Bernardes added that by Monday he will ask the Land Transportation Office and other traffic agencies to help their office apprehend the so-called colorum taxi units or taxis operating illegally.

“I will ask LTO to help us enforce the memorandum circular on this matter,” Bernardes said.

LTFRB’s memorandum circular 2008-019 issued last October 6, 2008 stipulated that the LTFRB en banc noted that there is a clamor among stakeholders in the taxi transportation service for the adoption of a numbering system to ensure easy identification and monitoring of authorized taxi units.

The memorandum also requires all taxi operators or franchise grantees to secure from LTFRB-7 the permanent numbers to be assigned to individual authorized units, which shall be issued upon payment.

Metro Cebu has about 4,000 taxi units, but Bernardes said most of the registered and unregistered units are also here.

Operators of taxi units without any TSNS will be fined P2,000 for the first offense, have their franchises suspended for the second offense and cancelled for the third offense.

Upon registration of the taxi unit with the TSNS, a taxi’s plate number and franchise number are linked to a four-digit sequence, which is stored in the LTFRB-7 database.

The sequence starts from 0001 and ends in 6137, which is the total number of registered taxi units in Central Visayas.

Taxi operators are required to paint the four-digit sequence on both sides and the back of the taxi unit.

With this, passengers can quickly identify the four-digit number instead of remembering the taxi’s plate number, in case of violations.   — Mitchelle L. Palaubsanon/BRP (THE FREEMAN)