By JOHN VAN KLAVEREN
THE disabled face “huge” cost blowouts for taxi travel under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) trial in Geelong, a parliamentary committee has heard.
The committee’s report on the Barwon trial site said local demand could skyrocket to 20,000 trips.
Geelong Taxi Network chief Peter Valentine told the committee the prospect was frightening.
“I’m totally scared, unless we get it right down here, about what will happen when it hits a capital city,” Mr Valentine said.
“We’re told we could have 2000 people in the space of a couple of years under this program.
“If they travel morning and night five days a week that’s 20,000 individual entries for a little company like ours.”
Mr Valentine said meeting an NDIS requirement to dispatch a single taxi for multiple users was impossible due to administrative issues.
“If we allow people to travel individually all of the time…those costs will blow out hugely. It causes huge bottlenecks at the respective areas where we drop off or pick up if we have too many cars in the one area.”
Mr Valentine said the NDIS was supplying transport plans for taxis far too late, causing numerous problems.
He was concerned the system was open to abuse because operators struggled to identify NDIS customers.
Anyone could claim to be an NDIS client because of a lack of accountability, he said.
