Managing Director of the Maldives Transport and Contracting Company (MTCC) Ahmed Saudee stated today that while the issue of people being on the phone for long periods of time and calls not being picked up for the Male' Taxi Line service has been on the rise, the taxi center alone has been receiving 58,000 calls daily.

The government's taxi line service was inaugurated via a ceremony that was held at Hulhumale' last Thursday night. Arrangements were made to make calls to the taxi line's hotline number, 1655, free for the first week of its introduction.

However, an overwhelming number of complaints have arisen close to a week of the service having been introduced. These cover calls to the hotline not being answered and customers being on the phone while the hotline number is busy.

According to people who have been expressing their concerns on social media, the issue of people being on the phone for 30 minutes after calling the hotline and their calls not being picked up, and the issue of the unavailability of cars is high. People have expressed their dissatisfaction as contacting the hotline is not free of charge, and as they have to wait for long periods of time in the queue to be assigned a taxi, their money is being spent even when they are not assigned a taxi.

Even though an application has been set up where customers can request taxis from the Male' Taxi service, the application has been experiencing various issues and has been brought offline, with people having to turn to the hotline.

Managing Director of MTCC Ahmed Saudee agreed with Mihaaru News when they had contacted him today regarding the concerns that the number of complaints were quite high. However, he said that they are working to find a permanent solution to the issue. Saudee also said that one of the main reasons is some technical difficulties.

While highlighting that around 58,000 calls are made daily from customers for the Male' Taxi service, Saudee said that they may be receiving that many calls because the service is currently free of charge.

"There are around 58,000 calls daily when looking at operating the call center. It may be because the service is currently free of charge," said Saudee.

According to Saudee, they are working on expanding operations for the call center.

The taxi service being free of charge will come to an end later tonight. Because of that, Saudee said that they are working to launch the testing phase of the web application before the deadline is reached. They are currently working on security measures for the application.

"The deadline for the service being free of charge is tonight. Before the deadline is reached, we are working to launch the testing of the web application. We are currently assessing its security. We are taking security measures before midnight strikes," said the Managing Director.

According to serious allegations on social media regarding the taxi application, the company in charge of the application by the name of Fixed Maldives has no experience in creating applications. Even though allegations of corruption have been made around a MVR 13 million transaction, Saudee stated that the cost of the work surrounding the taxi application is MVR 2 million.

Cases have been filed to the Parliament and the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) regarding corruption in the formulation of the taxi application.