Regulations for taxi drivers

The Tbilisi Transport Agency plans to introduce several regulations for taxi drivers from the next year, which will constitute a first and “painless” stage of a series of reforms.

Taxi drivers will have an obligation to have a special “information board” in their vehicle, which will identify the driver, their contact information, and whether they belong to a taxi company or not.

“The presence of the information board in the taxi will be a signal that the driver has undergone health checks and his vehicle is technically safe,” the head of the Tbilisi Transport Agency, Mamuka Mumladze, told local Kviris Palitra newspaper.

If a taxi driver will not have the special board in the car ,it means he/she has no right to carry passengers.

Mumladze stated that introducing the board would be the first stage of a series of reform in terms of the country's taxi services, which have never been regulated in Georgia.

Taxi services urgently require reforming and regulating in Georgia, as there are a lot of taxi drivers (in the capital city especially) with outdated and dangerous cars.

Taxi drivers are also infamous for their frequent violating of traffic rules.

However, those people who have no other source of income due to the current hard socioeconomic conditions very often earn their living through driving a taxi.

If even very light regulations are introduced (for instance introducing technical checks for cars), many taxi drivers will have no right to continue the activity.

It is entirely predictable that the government will introduce such rules when it is quite far from the next elections, as the Georgian Dream authorities refrain from antagonizing the electorate when elections approach. In addition, despite the fact that the government is reforming taxi services, it is doing little to alleviate economic conditions so that taxi drivers might find alternative employment.