Penza, 27 March 2017. PenzaNews. Over 100 people took part in a rally aimed at drawing attention of the officials and the society to issues of passenger and luggage transportation by taxi that was held in Dzerzhinsky public garden on Monday, March 27.

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The organizer of the rally was the union of professional taxi drivers of Penza.

Turning to those present, the head of the union Andrei Gaykalov reminded about negative effects of the work of dispatching services that dictate terms at the market serving as an intermediary between a carrier and a passenger.

Then, the deputy head Radik Muzafyarov read out a resolution.

"Currently, over 3,000 permissions for carrying out passenger and luggage transportation by taxi were issued. However, according to estimates of the professional community of drivers in the Penza region, passenger transportations are carried out by over 6,000 cars, which means that over half members of the market are illegal," the text states.

It is added that the failure to observe the law, as well as uncontrolled recruitment of drivers by dispatching services leads to unfair competition on the part of the persons who do not have a permission.

"That is the reason why drivers who work on a permanent basis have to withdraw into the shadows or are in distress due to the burden of taxes and documentation," the resolution states.

The document emphasizes that it leads to a decrease in the level of safety and quality of transportation.

"The efforts of the authorities aimed at suppression of illegal drivers’ activity are not of a large-scale systematic nature and give only point results. It can be explained first of all by imperfections of the existing administrative legislature, which complicates the fight against illegal drivers," the document explains.

In addition, it draws attention the the fact that the Part 2.1, Art. 12.3 of the Administrative Offences Code of the Russian Federation is not actually applied because it concerns only legal taxi drivers, and the Art. 14.1 does not bring a proper result due to low penalties – from 500 to 2,500 rubles.

Commenting on the text of the resolution, Radik Muzafyarov expressed the opinion that effective fight against illegal drivers should be two-way.

"It is necessary to increase drivers' responsibility for illegal transportation and to introduce such notion as 'Dispatching service' into the transportation system, which should be responsible for the persons it concluded an agreement with and and the persons it passed an order to," he said.

Radik Muzafyarov added that the union of professional taxi drivers of Penza supports adoption of amends to the law "On taxi", which would allow protection of drivers' rights.

Participants of the rally demanded to increase the minimum cost of travel to 120 rubles, as well as to create a specialized organization based on a professional union that would conduct a thorough selection of applicants who want to work in a taxi service.

Commenting on the announced demands, the deputy minister, the head of the department of transportation service of the Ministry of Industry of the Penza region Alexei Antipov noted that representatives of the department understand the demands of taxi drivers.

"Nevertheless, you have to take into account possibilities of people who use these services. In any case, let us wait for the adoption of the federal law [that will clarify priviliges of dispatching services]," he said.

During the rally, as well as after it, participants could leave their signatures under the text of the resolution, which it planned to be submitted to the State Duma of Russia. Its adoption was supported by 120 people.