Ljubljana is growing less and less safe by the day. This has recently been confirmed (once again) by an incident that happened to a Threads user in one of the local taxis. The taxi driver, who she said was “not Slovenian,” harassed her during the journey and she had to forcibly push him away. “If I had known who this weirdo was, I would have reported him. Ljubljana needs Uber and cameras; there is no other option. “
“This is Ljubljana today. More and more women are being vocal about such harassment, but the decision-makers hypocritically look the other way every time. Do we really want even worse crimes to start happening?” wrote an online influencer, Karin Planinšek, on the social network X. She was commenting on an incident that recently happened to a woman in a taxi.
“A post for my Slovenians; you need the Uber app!!! The Metro taxi is fine, but it does not protect the customer,” wrote the fashion web influencer Greta Gardner on the social network Threads. She had an unpleasant experience with a driver who forcibly kissed her while she was riding in a taxi.
“Yesterday, I was returning home from Metelkova (Metelkova is also not what it was ten years ago), and I took the first taxi that was parked in the front. I think it even said Metro on it. At the end of the ride, the guy (he was not Slovenian) grabbed me and tried to force me to give him a kiss,” she wrote, adding a barfing emoji. “I barely managed to get out of the taxi and had to forcefully push him away,” she was horrified by the taxi driver’s action. She regretted not knowing who he was, as she was thus unable to report him, but she also reminded her online followers that Ljubljana needs Uber and cameras.
Judging by the comments that followed, this is not an isolated case. “This situation has happened many times with Metro, I don’t know how they can even still be in business. This is horrible, really. I don’t dare to get in a taxi by myself anymore because I have heard such stories on the internet AND from friends and family,” one user commented on Gardner’s story.
Everything that non-governmental organisations and the government have fought for so far has proven time and again to be detrimental to citizens – especially their safety. They support the entry of illegal migrants into our country, and they have also prevented Uber from operating in our market, which all people could use. It is important to note here that the arrival of Uber to Slovenia was blocked by the trade unionist of taxi drivers, Dejan Jefim. He focused all his efforts on preventing the well-known app from entering the Slovenian market. The following comment, which followed Gartner’s post, is also spot on in terms of what we have mentioned above: “A mafia trade unionist will tell you that you made it all up and that Uber drivers are raping their customers in America, and again, nothing will happen”.
Uber’s bad practices, such as breaking labour laws by not recognising drivers as employees, regardless of the amount of work they do; precarious work, unlimited working hours and low wages, and the violated right to sick leave or vacation – all of these were counter-arguments by Jefim and his supporters, who, because of their own egos and more than obvious immaturity, were not up to the task of solving the real problem, because they (conveniently) overlooked the problems that Slovenian taxi drivers, and apparently also their customers, are struggling with on a daily basis, due to the potentially unverified taxi drivers that the companies employ.
A. H.
