About 300 taxi drivers, licence holders and their family members gathered in Melbourne CBD on Monday noon to protest against the state government’s plan to deregulate the taxi industry and abolish taxi licenses.
SBS Hindi earlier reported that the Victorian Government has given a green light to ride sharing service, Uber as well as introduce a single registration for taxis.
Government has proposed to pay compensation to licence holders of $100,000 for the first licence and $50,000 for the second.
Many of the Indian-origin taxi drivers in Melbourne told SBS Hindi that many licence holders had paid upto $500,000 per licence, and the changes would ruin them.
Bahadur Singh, a taxi driver in Melbourne since a decade said, “We are not against Uber. But we paid hundreds of thousands to get into this business. It should be a level playing field.”
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