Shanghai launched a campaign today to clean-up the city's bad taxi drivers, who take passengers on longer routes or refuse to take passengers on short trips, Oriental Morning Post reported.

Any driver who breaches the rule may face a fine of 200 yuan (US$25.64) and can be suspended for 15 days, according to the city's taxi administrative rules.

Local taxi drivers who offer bad services will also bear bad records in their credit system starting from today, the newspaper said.

From the second half of last year, there was a boom in the number of taxi drivers who offered dishonest services.

Some of these cabbies reportedly target newcomers, especially foreigners at Longyang Road after they get off the city's maglev train from Pudong International Airport. Some even ask passengers for unreasonably high fares of at least four times the normal price.

The city's taxi administration has established a hotline (86-21-962-000) as well as a Website (www. Jt.sh.cn) for passenger complaints.

Shanghai now has 150 taxi companies and 46,000 taxis, which carry 2.8 million passengers a day, accounting for 24 percent of the daily public transport volume.

Local media reports said numerous taxi drivers chose to leave the industry since oil prices rapidly surged in the second half of last year.

(Shanghai Daily January 12, 2007)