A message from a concerned TOA driver
I AM yet another driver within TOA Taxis who wishes to voice his disgust at the ongoing shenanigans within this office.
As you are aware, eight of my colleagues have now been dismissed for whistleblowing. As a result of this, all driver protests have ceased for fear of similar repercussions.
After the submission of a report to the licensing committee where the council virtually washes its hands of the matter, the board of TOA now feel invincible and are disabling drivers’ systems, bullying and threatening drivers with dismissal at every turn.
Read between the lines and you will see that all the driver concerns of recent months are coming true.
The board members of TOA have now admitted they are in fact privatising this association so that they, the 22, can benefit financially, to the detriment of all the drivers who make this association function. Speak up against this and you will be victimised or dismissed.
Now that the association is to be privatised, the penny appears to have finally dropped that they need a new West Dunbartonshire Council taxi booking office licence to operate legally.
The terms of this, as with any formal licence application sought from WDC and the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, is that they are required to post notice to the general public for a period of 21 days to allow any reasonable objection to be submitted.
Given that the TOA members feel they are beyond question and reproach from the council’s licensing committee, their drivers, and the general public, did they even think to post notification of their licence application?
No, they didn’t. Their arrogance and defiance of the law continues. Late afternoon on Tuesday, February 8, such a notice did appear – but was placed 10 inches high in their window giving any member of the public walking by little chance of viewing.
Around 10am on Friday, February 11, this notification was removed. What do they have to hide?
I therefore take this opportunity, as a concerned driver and member of this community, to ask the people of Dumbarton and Alexandria to write to the head of legal services at West Dunbartonshire Council objecting to TOA as not being fit and proper to receive a second taxi booking office licence.
My concerns, and those of over 100 of my colleagues, are that in allowing TOA this option, it means the door is open to organised criminals to become shareholders in TOA.
Name and address supplied and withheld on request
http://www.lennoxherald.co.uk/comment/
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