MOWASALAT is considering awarding franchisee to other companies to cope with the shortage of taxis in the city.
Mowasalat senior business development manager Ahmed al-Ansari yesterday said the company was studying various options to address the woes of taxi users.
He said though the number of taxis had increased after the launch three years ago, the demand for taxis had also gone up considerably. “This is clear from the complaints being received from commuters about the shortage of taxis every now and then,” said al-Ansari.
The Mowasalat official said the availability of taxis would improve after setting up of more ranks in the coming months. “Our plan is to set up at least 60 taxi ranks in the country, including outside Doha. At present, only 20 ranks are operational,” said an-Ansari.
Attributing the shortage of taxis to a combination of interval and external factors, al-Ansari said sometimes communication problems in the GPS network delays the response time.
The official said though the installation of Tetra Radio communication network had improved the reach and availability, a lot remains to be done to meet the growing demand.
When it was pointed out to him that Karwa taxis had been involved in more accidents than other vehicles, the official said it could be because the taxis were easy to spot than others.
“Even otherwise, figures have shown that accident rates in Qatar are greater than those in the neighbouring countries,” said al-Ansari.
The official said there was no proposal of introducing newly-launched Faresaver Storevalue cards for taxis as well.

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