Wellington Combined Taxis committed to training

At a presentation last week, the taxi company – Wellington’s largest and New Zealand’s second largest – marked the success of 13 drivers, who completed a Limited Credit Program (LCP) training course.

Training and Compliance Manager, Athol Smith, says 260 drivers out of a total of about 540 have now passed the LCP. The remaining drivers are expected to complete the course by June 2010.

The LCP is designed to give taxi drivers confidence in all elements of passenger service, especially those with special needs; occupational safety and health; traffic law and the management of stress, health and fatigue. It is presently a contractual requirement of the Ministry of Education for all drivers of school children and special needs passengers to be formally trained, assessed and qualified to transport all such passengers. The LCP training achieves all these objectives.

Athol says the program boosts driver knowledge so they are even more able to offer excellent service to all WCT customers.

“Also, the LCP course deals with issues that the drivers already understand, and at the same time increases accident and risk awareness. Driving a taxi is already a fully focused professional task, so it is important that we are risk averse and always follow safe driving practices”.

In a move to further boost knowledge and skill levels Wellington Combined is also aiming to ensure all drivers have completed the full National Certificate in Taxi Driving by December 2012.

When awarding LCP certificates to the drivers on Tuesday, Tranzqual CEO, Wayne Smith, said research had shown that the performance of an organisation could improve by up to 20 percent if formal staff training and staff recognition were introduced.

One of the certificate recipients, Kaia Hanna, said that although the course was not difficult, some work was required by trainees, which reinforced the use of existing driver knowledge, when driving their cab, every day.   
Kaia added, “The trainers were really helpful and we were supplied with good information so that helped. I enjoyed it. The National Certificate will be good for me. It’s good for my CV, that’s why I’m doing it.”