The city's transport authority has decided not to punish two taxi companies after they took steps to improve their service.

The Shanghai Traffic Law Enforcement Team said it was canceling punishments against the Shanghai Wanzhong and New World taxi companies as they had passed tests during a grace period.

In April the companies were ranked the worst on the official violation list of the taxi industry and faced a 15-day suspension of business. More than 4 percent of their taxis were involved in cheating and other offenses.

Both companies launched investigations into staff and admitted their screening procedures had been slack in recent years - it was becoming increasing difficult to hire cabbies because of the unattractive income level and stress.

Shanghai started to publish monthly violation rankings of city cabbies in February.

(Shanghai Daily July 2, 2008)