Taxi drivers in Bermuda need their own commission like their counterparts in New York, a meeting heard last night.

Cabbie William Glenn Tucker said at the packed gathering at Cathedral Hall in Hamilton that taxi drivers were “tired of being treated like dummies” and needed a representative body to fight their corner.

“We need direction, we have ideas,” he said, adding: “Without a body that is responsible for us and only us we are always going to struggle like this.”

The 63-year-old said the industry was treated unfairly by an “incompetent” Ministry of Transport on issues such as price increases and the introduction of global positioning systems (GPS) in cabs.

“Why is it that someone in Government has not established a taxi authority?” he asked. “If you catch a taxi in New York you see in the back ‘Taxi Authority’. We want our own authority and the authority would or could address price increases.

“If Belco goes to the Price Commission, why can’t we? Why must we be treated as uneducated business people?”

Mr. Tucker was speaking at a meeting called by new Opposition Leader Michael Dunkley, who told the taxi drivers they were a “vital part of the landscape of Bermudian society”.

He said he wanted to know more about the issues concerning them. “As a businessman myself, I’m well aware that under the current business climate you are facing some severe challenges with the price of gasoline being high,” he said.

Mr. Dunkley later told the meeting that the legislation which made GPS mandatory for cabbies would be repealed under a United Bermuda Party government.

Shadow Transport Minister Bob Richards said GPS should never have been forced on them in the first place and that he sympathised with the fact that they could not set their own fares.

He added that the UBP’s last election platform included plans for a taxi commission.

Taxi driver Leopold Kuchler told the meeting that GPS was “garbage”. He also lamented the state of the roads and the “dinosaur technology” of the traffic lights in Hamilton.

Fellow cabbie Junior DeSilva said the idea of a taxi commission was not new and that many of the problems facing the industry were caused by the mentality of taxi drivers.

“I’m so disillusioned at times with my colleagues,” he said. “If we went out of this room tonight united as a group we would be a power to be reckoned with.”

Another driver — who did not give his name — claimed that former Premier Alex Scott personally told him that cabbies would get a promised 20 percent price increase but it never came. “The Government deceived us,” he said.