Workers Party representative expresses anger that young women who had enjoyed the féile on Saturday night had a bad experience with the taxi they took
Workers Party representative Ursula Meighan said she had been contacted by the parents of three young women who attended féile on Saturday night and had a really great night - until they left to go home and flagged a taxi down in the street.
They flagged a taxi down on the street. The three 18-year-olds were travelling home to East Belfast, but when they arrived at the markets area the driver stopped and said this was as far as he was going and then charged them £35, leaving them to walk the rest of the way to the East of the City.
Ms Meighan said apart from the overcharging, what the driver did in leaving three young girls to walk home was "terrible".
She said: "The féile is now an international festival and Translink should be providing night buses to ensure that people can get home safely and local Taxi firms should fix reasonable fares.
"Passengers are aware that it is more expensive to get a taxi in the early hours, but they don’t expect to be both exploited and abandoned before the reach home."
Ms Meighan added: "The parents will be making a complaint to the taxi company and we will be asking the Feile organisers to support our call for night buses and increased taxi coverage and to ensure passengers are delivered to their destinations, not abandoned where the driver decides to stop.
"The families are quite rightly angry and concerned about what might have happened to their daughters as they walked the rest of the way home in the early hours of the morning. This driver's actions were shameful."