Why did The Star not publish my letter?

As long term readers will know, I have had quite a few letters published in Malaysian newspapers. I have raised many issues in their pages, usually on various social issues, of some kind. A few weeks ago, I sent The Star (of Malaysia), the letter below. It was never published. The question is: why? The contents are socially helpful and would, if acted on, change Malaysia, for the better. Yet, someone, at The Star, preferred silence on the issue. The letter follows:

Malaysian taxi drivers lack road knowledge.

In London, licensed taxi drivers have to pass a special exam, called The Knowledge. This involves learning 320 routes through London and the location of every single landmark and place of interest within a six mile radius of Charing Cross. A London Black Cab driver never gets lost, never fails to know the way and gets the customer to their destination every time. Malaysian drivers, however, are a rather different breed. Many of them seem to have no knowledge of Kuala Lumpur at all.

Recently, I have become accustomed to taxi drivers not being able to find their way, to a well known location, in Kuala Lumpur – even if they are parked only a couple of kilometres away. I sometimes have to ask four or five drivers, before I can find one who knows the way, even though the road I am asking them to go to, is a main one. It seems that people are starting to drive cabs, without any detailed knowledge of Kuala Lumpur’s roads. This should simply not be allowed.

Sometimes, drivers pretend to know where somewhere is, just to get the fare. However, part way into the journey, it becomes clear that the driver is lost and has no clue where to go. How can this be called a “taxi service”? If Malaysia is ever to be considered a developed country, it must have a developed transport system – and taxis are part of that.

The solution is simple. Taxi drivers in Malaysia, should have to learn, in detail, every road, every route, every landmark and place of interest, in the bounds of the city or area in which they are licensed, before they are ever allowed to drive a cab. Furthermore, if a cab driver gets lost – or pretends to be lost – they should have no right to charge the customer, for the unaccountably long journey. Were these suggestions to be implemented, Malaysia would finally have a taxi service that meets the customers’ needs. Incidentally, it would also leave a much better impression on foreign visitors, who, at present, can only conclude that there is something incompetent about Malaysia’s taxi services. Is that the impression Malaysia wants to give, to the world?

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Where is The Knowledge in a "Knowledge economy"?

"The Knowledge" is a term used to describe the detailed understanding of the streets of London that London cab drivers (taxi drivers) have. Cabbies spend sometimes years learning their way around the streets of London before they are allowed to become London cab drivers. The Knowledge involves memorizing 320 routes through London, allowing them to take the shortest route between any two points in the central London area. It covers a six mile radius around Charing Cross and takes in all theatres and public buildings. The result is that a London taxi driver knows exactly where to go to get you where you want. Sadly, this is not so in Singapore.

Singapore has something called The Ignorance. This is a system whereby all new taxi drivers are required not to have a clue where to go. This rigorous selection system ensures that no new taxi driver will be able to take you anywhere you want, without detailed instructions from the passenger. If a new taxi driver is given free rein to drive you where they want, this will inevitably involve a random tour around the island as he hopes to stumble on your location by chance. The Ignorance is the Singapore government's way of ensuring that taxi drivers can afford the daily hire charge for their cabs, by inflating the prices to all customers through unnecessarily long routes. It is a characteristically ingenious way, invented by government approved scholars, of ensuring that Singapore's competitors in South East Asia have a fair chance of catching up on Singapore's lead, by guaranteeing that no businessman will be able to get to a meeting on time, nor anyone else to their work place before it closes for business, for the day.

I encountered The Ignorance the other day, when we had to take a trip to Cable Road. Now, as every good cabby should know, Cable Road is next to the Malaysian High Commission. So, it would seem that every cab driver should know where that was. However, this was not the case. The cabbies had been well and truly trained in The Ignorance.

The first driver stopped pretty promptly, when we flagged. I take this to mean that he is desperate for cash on what must be a bad business day - since it is customary, in Singapore, for taxi drivers to drive around empty, with their blue lights on, forcing you to make a call out and pay the charges for doing so. This cabby, however, stopped. I should have known it was a bad sign.

My wife said: "Cable road", as she opened the door, just to check he knew where he was going.

He nodded, as if all knowing. He was about 200 years old, so he should have been, by now. That is another thing about Singaporean cab drivers - they seem to be the oldest in the world. The reason is simple: Singapore has no pensions and the old folk are desperate for cash. Furthermore, Singapore is a deeply ageist society and doesn't like employing anyone older than fifty or so - indeed, sometimes those retrenched in their forties find it hard to get a new job. One day, teenagers will find it hard to get a job, here. They will employ embryos only.

So, we drove off. A little down the road, however, there was something hesitant about this particular ancient driver. He looked from left to right as if he was not quite sure, not where he was, but what a road was. That was worrying.

My wife piped up: "Cable Road, uncle...Cable Road..."

"Farrer Road...Farrer Road...", he repeated, perhaps in the hope that he could change our destination to somewhere that pleased him.

"Cable Road...Cable Road...", repeated my wife.

"Cable Road? Sorry, uh?"

"Let's get out." I decided.

I had to repeat it three times before he slowed the cab to let us out.

The next driver also stopped promptly. Boy these cab drivers must be suffering.

This time, we were more wary.

"Don't get in, until he shows he knows the way." I urged my wife.

"Cable Road.", she said, to the driver, leaning into the open taxi, just enough to be heard.

"Cable Road?", he said, as if we had spoken in Martian, "There is NO Cable Road."

"Yes there is." I said, knowing that otherwise someone we knew would have a hard time explaining how they lived on it.

We shut the door and let him drive on, confident that if he didn't know about it, it couldn't exist. I found this an interesting variation on The Ignorance: the idea that if he didn't know about it, it couldn't be because he didn't know about it, but because it must not exist: how ego-preserving - and how very Singaporean.

The third driver also stopped promptly. I was getting worried.

"Cable Road.", said my wife, half-expecting its existence to be questioned.

"C-A-B-L-E R-O-A-D." he said, so slowly, it was abundantly clear that he was, momentarily at least, lost.

We waited while he processed the destination.

"Ah...yes, the Malaysian High Comm." he said, at last.

He knew where it was.

We got in.

Now, here is a question: in a country as small and simply organized as Singapore is, should it really take three taxi drivers, to find ONE who knows where the Malaysian High Commission is? (We weren't going there, but somewhere very near by).

The real puzzle of this is that a taxi driver once told me that before they are allowed to drive, they are supposed to learn where all the main hotels and embassies are, so the foreigners won't be disappointed by the drivers. Well, we were disappointed - and yet we were going to one of the destinations they are supposed to have learnt about.

It is time for Singapore to set aside The Ignorance so carefully cultivated in their drivers and replace it with something similar to The Knowledge. A country whose taxi drivers don't know where they are going, is a country that has yet, truly, to arrive in the First World.

So, the question is: does Singapore want a First World image, or a Third World image? Part of the formula to that impression lies in whether taxi drivers have a clue where they are going. Presently, many Singaporean drivers don't. That has to change.

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Are Singaporean taxi drivers trained?

Singaporean taxi drivers often strike me as among the least knowledgeable of their breed. Indeed, Singapore is the only country I have ever visited, in which the taxi drivers quite often don't know where they are going. It seems needless to add, but add I must, that Singapore is such a small country, that it is, in fact, a modest sized city, and that to not know where you are going, within it, as a professional driver, is quite some feat.

It is apt that I should comment at this time, for the largest taxi fleet is set to raise the flagdown rate of its taxis by a rumoured 30 cents and has hinted at other ways to raise revenue (read: increase pricing), as well. This comes upon the huge rise in call-out charges some months back.

The big question is, of course: are these price rises justified when service is so poor?

Before any prices rise, the taxi fleets need to address the issue of driver competence. Singaporean drivers are often a poorly informed and not particularly honest bunch. They don't know where they are going - or if they do, they deliberately take very circuitous routes. They do anything they can to inflate the fare and cheat the passenger - particularly if, like me, that passenger is a foreigner. I have seen all sorts of ploys - all of them calculated to deprive me of rather more dollars than is justified by the journey embarked upon. Some drivers have even driven off with the passengers' belongings. (Some 20,000 dollars worth of wedding gifts, for instance, in a famous recent case.) So, all in all, a Singaporean taxi is something to be wary of, for one reason or another.

A recent journey brought me to ask the title question. We booked a taxi (and paid the exorbitant surcharges), since we were going to a wedding. Rather than give him our precise location, we told him to drive to somewhere obvious, nearby.

"Jurong Junior College.", we requested, as we got into the cab.

"Where? I don't know.", he replied.

Ah, I thought, he doesn't know where the Junior College is.

"You show me.", he continued, pointing ahead at the mystery of the roads, on which he drove daily.

So, we were to show a professional driver, in a very small city, where to go...

We got to the first meeting of roads and he slowed. "Which way?" he asked, without embarrassment.

It was clear, then, that it was not the Junior College that he didn't know the way to. He didn't know the way to Jurong. That flabbergasted me - for it meant he didn't know the city at all.

As the journey proceeded, this man, who had the nerve to call himself a taxi driver, would ask us for instructions at every single meeting of roads, junction or turning, all along the way. He quite simply knew nothing at all of the geography of Singapore.

Finally, as we neared our destination, my wife said: "Just turn left at Jurong JC."

"JC? I don't know what JC is." he said, in utter mystification.

My wife and I looked at each other. There is something you should know at this point. Only Singaporeans are allowed to drive Singaporean taxis. That means that all were born here, educated here and grew up here. As you have no doubt noticed, JC is the abbreviation for Junior College (which we first asked him for). So, even if he had been a foreigner - which he couldn't possibly be - he should have known what JC was. Yet, he was a native. He had been through the school system - yet he had managed to do so, without knowing the names of the schools.

I grew really uncomfortable then. Was our driver senile? He didn't look old enough to be, being in his fifties at my best guess. Or was he just lying about his lack of knowledge? Was his "I don't know where I am going", just a ruse to ensure that, on average, he always travelled a longer route than otherwise, because his passengers would tend not to have the best route knowledge?

In a way, I rather hoped it was a ruse - for I find it incredible that someone of so little mental competence, as not even to know the most basic things about the society he grew up in - not its geography and not the names of its institutions - could actually be allowed behind the wheel of a taxi.

Was he truly that mentally incompetent? If so, he shouldn't be driving - and a system that can allow such a driver on the road, is seriously flawed. Clearly, there is no real training of these drivers. It is not infrequent to step into a cab driven by someone who hasn't got a clue where he is going. That should never happen. No-one should be allowed to drive until they know their way around.

In London, where I grew up, the cab drivers prided themselves on The Knowledge - an examination in the routing between all destinations in London. All cab drivers had to pass this test. As a result, I never had the experience, in London, of being driven by a taxi driver who didn't know where he was going. Yet, in Singapore, I have that experience several times a week. Singaporean drivers simply don't know Singapore. Furthermore, those that do, often use that knowledge of best routes, to avoid them and give the passenger the longest, most expensive route possible (at least they do to me, a Caucasian). It is truly a disgrace to the nation. Yet, instead of addressing the issue of useless, incompetent and dishonest drivers - what are the authorities going to do? They are going to raise the price of taxis again. That is the second time in a year.

Before they raise prices, they should first take off the roads all the dishonest drivers - and all the incompetent drivers. All new drivers should be exhaustively trained in the ways and byways of Singapore. Then, and only then, should they even begin to consider raising the price. They should remember that it is called a taxi SERVICE - and attend to the service part, first.

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