Reacting to the press statement by SATSU on the restriction of taxis plying from Manipur, the Mao Tata Sumo Welfare Union (MTSWU) and Senapati District Taxi Welfare Union (SDTWU) held an emergency meeting at Mao town hall to deliberate on the claims put up by SATSU.
A press note by MTSWU president Kosiihrii Kenneth, president and SDTWU president, Paode Daonamai stated that the meeting clarified the matter for public consumption. It stated that as per the “so-called July 2010 Agreement came about due to an unfortunate incident involving two individual taxi drivers from Nagaland and another from Manipur”. The release stated that in “order to prevent such incident in the future, an agreement called the 2010 Agreement was reached between the then Southern Drivers Union and Mao Drivers Union”. It stated that in the agreement no mention was made of any condition whatsoever to suggest that Mao taxis would not ply from Kohima to Mao Gate. It also noted that Kohima to Mao Gate route was also an equally vital important for Mao taxis drivers and have not deprived the Southern Angamis of their livelihood by imposing restrictions on their taxis to ply from Mao Gate.
Further the press release alleged that the “Mao taxi drivers, taking advantage of the Koziirii-Dziikou conflict that occurred during the summer of 2015, started plying from Kohima to Mao”. It pointed out that, taking note of the passengers’ woes the then president of ANTA (Mao Unit) wrote a letter to the president of SATSU requesting the resumption of plying their taxis from Mao Gate which was not acknowledged. In this regard, the accusation leveled against the Mao taxi drivers as “taking advantage of the conflict started plying and taking passengers from Kohima to Mao” was totally baseless and false as there was no mention of any restriction in the agreement for Mao taxis to ply from Mao to Kohima and vice versa, stated the release.
It further pointed out that as contrary to the claim made by SATSU that “the Southern Angamis Taxis had stopped plying in the route for months” the MTSWU clarified that the service from Kohima to Mao Gate had been disrupted for years now i.e since June 2015 till date. However the SATSU did ply Kohima to Mao line in between on the basis of first come first similar to Mao-Dimapur line for a short period but later ceased to operate on their own, it added.
The release also stated that in regard to the meeting convened by SATSU on April 27, 2017, the Mao and Senapati units duly acknowledged that the presidents of Mao and Senapati units failed to attend the meeting on account of some unavoidable circumstances but did send their representatives to the said meeting. Having failed to reach an agreement due to the absence of the units presidents, the Mao and Senapati units requested another meeting on May 17 at Bviingho (between Mao gate and Khuzama gate), the release claimed. However, it stated that SATSU failed to attend the meeting, wherein the Mao and Senapati units volunteered to go to SATSU to resolve the matter but SATSU walked out of the meeting failing to reach any agreement.
It clarified that as per SATSU president’s statement that “the complication arose because many of the Mao Private Vehicles are used as Taxis, which also led them to restrict all private vehicles carrying passengers,” whereas SATSU allowed their private vehicles to ferry passengers from Khuzama to Mao and Mao to Khuzama without any restriction, which showed that no restrictions had been imposed on anyone by MTSWU and SDTWU.
MTSWU and SDTWU stated that Maos and Southern Angamis being blood brothers and would be neighbours for all times, as such, it would be in the best interest of all the parties to come to a mutual understanding and the MTSWU and SDTWU would like to make a stand that whosoever have taxi permits should be allowed to ply their taxis hereafter.
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