Representatives of the Transport Bureau review bids for an on-call taxi service licence.
The Government has accepted one bid for an on-call taxi service licence, after reviewing the three bids the Government received. The new service is expected to become available next year. The details were announced after a tender opening session on Wednesday (13 January). The accepted bid was from Lai Ou Taxi Service Company and the other two bids had been rejected because they did not fulfil all the tender requirements. The winning bidder will be granted an eight-year licence to operate a service with up to 100 on-call taxis, including a minimum of five wheelchair accessible taxis and 10 large-sized taxis, according to the tender requirements. The proposal submitted by Lai Ou includes three types of special service charges: a calling fee of 15 patacas; a booking fee of 15 patacas; and a no show fee of 5 patacas. The Transport Bureau will now examine in detail the proposal submitted by Lai Ou before making a final decision on the tender for the on-call taxi service licence. According to the tender requirements, the service operator must be a Macao-registered company. In addition, the firm must have a service centre to manage booking requests for taxis. Besides phone, online and mobile phone apps, the operator is required to explore other ways to accept bookings in order to make it easier for people with special needs to use the service. The operator can apply for a special subsidy from the Government to acquire the wheelchair accessible taxis, according to the tender requirements. The Government might subsidise up to 50 percent of the acquisition costs of those vehicles.