Hong Kong loves to hate its cabbies - can polite ambassadors help?

 Business owner Louis Ho remembers how so many of Hong Kong's taxi drivers refused to take him and his mother - who was a wheelchair user - to hospital for routine check-ups.

“I didn’t even need the driver to carry my mum or the wheelchair. I did everything myself,” says the 64-year-old whose mother passed away in 2018.

He is one of many Hong Kongers who have a story to tell about their city's infamous cabbies. Ask them what they like least about Hong Kong, and taxi drivers will likely be high on the list.


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The most common complaints: drivers are rude, refuse to accept rides and often take longer routes so customers have to pay more.

But now the Hong Kong Taxi Council is on a mission to transform this image. They will despatch “courtesy ambassadors” armed with "best-practice" pamphlets to taxi stands.

Will that really help? That depends on who you ask.

A single campaign cannot school rude or misbehaving drivers overnight - there are about 46,000 cabbies in the city, cautions Ryan Wong, the chairman of the council.

But he is hopeful: "This is not the first time that we have done this, and the feedback from drivers has been positive."

Hong Kongers are more sceptical. An interview clip of a taxi driver saying that passengers, rather than drivers, are the ones to be educated has gone viral in the city - many point to it as evidence that nothing will change.

Many of them are also still smarting from past experiences.

Amy Ho, in her 30s, said she stopped taking taxis a few years ago after an encounter that she found particularly unpleasant.

“I didn’t realise I had asked for a very short journey. As soon as I reached the destination, I scrambled for cash to pay," she says.

"It was merely five seconds or so, and the driver said, ‘Can you stop dragging on, auntie? I can’t believe you need a ride for such a short distance and you can’t even afford it!'.”


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