‘If we don’t reach a solution, we won’t let public transport function on Saturday’

Hala Kilani
Daily Star staff

In the days before the Saturday deadline for the implementation of Law 341, serious confrontations are expected between the government, which is committed to removing diesel-powered cars from the roads, and taxi drivers, determined to keep the vehicles around.
The law aims at reducing air pollution through the elimination of taxis with diesel engines by Saturday, and of small vans using the fuel a month later.
Taxi drivers brought traffic at the Cola junction to a standstill Friday during a rally of more than 2,000 drivers who shouted in anger to journalists.
They accused government officials of “pursuing their own interests and disregarding that of the poor.”
“Why doesn’t the law include the big red buses owned by (Prime Minister Rafik) Hariri and the ones owned by (Tripoli MP Mosbah) Ahdab,” shouted the drivers. “They use diesel too, don’t they pollute? Don’t we have the right to live too? Or is earning money confined to them?”
Their accusations referred to the fact that the law will not be applied to the buses of the Lebanese Commuting Company owned by the Hariri-backed Sidon native, Khalil Zantout, and the “Ahdab” vehicles owned by the MP himself.
Already suffering under difficult economic conditions, which they blamed on the policies of the government, taxi drivers said that if “the source of their livelihood” were removed from circulation, they would have nothing to lose and would fight back.
Suggested courses of action ranged from “bringing the government down” by closing off streets throughout the country to “acts of violence.”
“I have five children to feed but I am ready to burn my car before having it impounded by authorities,” insisted one driver, Mahmoud Dinnawi. “Our situation resembles that of the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories who have nothing more to lose so they become suicide bombers.”
An older driver, Hassan Khalife, reminded officials that in the 1970s, all taxi drivers’ demands were met when they shut down the streets, insisting that he and his colleagues were prepared to follow the scenario.
The drivers asserted that economic deterioration perpetrated by “corruption and incorrect decision-making at the top” had produced their current situation in the first place, and that they feared additional government intervention would “drive them into hunger.”
“I used to own a company and I lost it because of the bad economy following the war, so I took up taxi-driving to feed my family,” said Hassan Halawi. “But now what? During the war at least we used to die instantly, now they’re killing us slowly with their corruption.”
Ali Atweh said he had a master’s degree in electronic engineering from Switzerland, but after refusing to sell a piece of land he owned in the Solidere area facing the municipality of Beirut, he was blacklisted among potential employers here.
“It’s a sort of harassment by Hariri to force me to sell him the land ­ every time I’m recruited in a job, I get fired a few days later and they tell me the ‘Sidon bear’ wants it,” Atweh said.
The drivers stressed that each one of them had a big family forced to subsist on LL25,000 per day after paying LL7,000 for each tank of diesel fuel.
They said the LL22,000 cost of a tank of gasoline would render their survival impossible.
The meeting’s organizers, presidents of the Confederation of Taxi Drivers Union and the General Labor Confederation Abdel Amir Najda and Bassem Tleis, insisted on their demands. They have urged the government to either let taxi drivers continue using diesel engines or provide subsidized gasoline at LL10,000. “If we don’t reach a solution, we won’t allow public transport to function on Saturday,” Najda said.
For their part, senior politicians, including Speaker Nabih Berri and Hariri, declared that the law would be implemented.

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