SINGAPORE/JOHOR BAHRU: It is 2pm on a weekday at Ban San Street Terminal in Singapore, where licensed taxi drivers are authorised to pick up passengers headed across the border to Johor Bahru.

A dozen or so people can be seen waiting idly in the sheltered terminal – but no one is there to board a taxi.

“There are only drivers here and no passengers,” said Mr Haniff Mahbob, 73, who has been a taxi driver for over 40 years. “That is how bad the situation has become.”

Over at Larkin Sentral Terminal in Johor Bahru, licensed Malaysian taxi drivers are also facing similar struggles. Business is somewhat better on weekends, though not by much.

“Sometimes, I would come at about 3am but would only get my first passenger at 7.30am,” 59-year-old Roslan Mahmod told CNA. 

Since the reopening of borders after the COVID-19 pandemic, the drivers have faced intense competition from illegal cross-border operators who offer to pick up passengers from their doorstep and drop them off at their intended destinations.

“It's over already,” said Mr Haniff, who added that there used to be long queues of passengers before the pandemic.

“Will it ever come back to the same glorious (days) as before? I doubt so, unless something drastic is done about what is going on in the industry.”

Under the cross-border taxi scheme, up to 400 taxis from Singapore and Malaysia are licensed to pick up and drop off passengers only at a single designated point in the other’s country - Larkin Sentral in Johor Bahru for Singapore taxis and Ban San Street Terminal in Singapore for Malaysian taxis.

The scheme is underutilised, said Singapore's Land Transport Authority (LTA) on Sunday (Aug 3). There are approximately 300 licensed cross-border taxi drivers across Singapore and Malaysia in total.

To join the scheme, LTA requires Malaysia-registered taxis to obtain a public service vehicle licence and a permit, while Singapore-registered taxis will need a permit from Malaysia’s Land Public Transport Agency (Agensi Pengangkutan Awam Darat).

Foreign-registered private vehicles are not allowed to provide chauffeured cross-border services as they are not appropriately licensed or insured, LTA said. 

Despite this, illegal operators have been eating into the earnings of th...