On some evenings at Velana International Airport, the taxi queue looks less like a public service and more like an auction. Passengers line up in the humid air while drivers lean against their cars, scanning the line for the right kind of fare. A short hop into Malé with one passenger or a quick run across to Hulhumalé can be met with shrugs, refusals or conditions. Longer trips and cash payments are welcome. Complaints about taxis refusing Malé rides, demanding cash and cherry picking customers now fill social media threads, and coffee table conversations.
In one of the most densely populated island cities in the world, where more than 200,000 people are squeezed into the Greater Malé area, the taxi is not a luxury. It is the default way to move between a crowded capital, an artificial suburb and an airport built on its own island. Yet the basic rules that govern this essential service are fragile. Fares are fixed by regulation, but often ignored. Complaints are encouraged, but enforcement is patchy. The meter has been promised for nearly a decade, but never arrives. Now, as the government prepares a state run electric taxi fleet, drivers accuse officials of trying to crush their livelihoods, while passengers feel they were treated badly long before the state ever showed up.
The result is a kind of urban fiefdom. Taxi centres and app based operators control access to cars. State institutions try to regulate a sector on which almost everyone depends, while also toying with the idea of becoming a direct competitor through a government owned fleet. In between sit commuters who queue, wait and pay.
A decade of half measures
The modern taxi story in Malé began to change in the late 2010s, when the Sinamalé Bridge linked the capital to Hulhulé and Hulhumalé. The bridge created longer routes and new earning possibilities for drivers. It also opened space for disputes over prices and regulation. In 2019, the Ministry of Transport announced that it would make meters compulsory in taxis, citing public support and concerns about increased fares between Malé, the airport and Hulhumalé.
Meters were never installed. Instead, the state leaned on fixed fares and mobile apps. Taxi drivers were told to use one of the approved apps, including Avas Ride, and to operate within a set fare structure for trips inside Malé and between the islands in the Greater Malé region.
The fare schedule has been revised several times since, often in response to fuel prices and pressure from drivers. In 2022 the government authorised higher fares across the Greater Malé area after taxi centres jointly agreed to raise prices. In May 2024, the Ministry of Transport again changed fares, fixing trips within Malé, Hulhumalé Phase 1 and Phase 2 at MVR 30 and setting specific charges for travel between the capital, Hulhumalé and the airport. It also, for the first time, formalised higher fares for seven to ten seater vehicles and allowed extra charges for the domestic terminal and for additional luggage.
These adjustments did not end disputes. Drivers protested that the new structure was unfair, while passengers complained that taxis were continuing to overcharge or ignore the official rate card. The Transport Ministry set up a QR code complaint system and urged passengers to report taxis that refused short city trips. Officials publicly acknowledged repeated complaints about taxis refusing to go to certain destinations, overloading vehicles and charging above the regulated fares.
For riders, the experience is confusing. There is a formal fare structure with official announcements, a cluster of apps and taxi centres that mediate bookings, and then the unwritten rules at the curb. Short trips within Malé are less attractive to drivers than airport and Hulhumalé runs. Some drivers insist on cash. Others simply do not turn up when booked through apps.
The meter remains an absent referee. The idea resurfaced again in 2019 when the Drivers Association said their main concern was the failure to introduce meters after multiple discussions. In May 2024 the Transport Ministry once more announced that it would begin efforts to install meters, calling it a priority that both drivers and passengers wanted. Yet by late 2025 there are still no meters in service.
Taxi Nafaa and the ghost cars
Against this backdrop of unresolved regulation, the state tried to push more drivers into the market. In 2023 the SME Development Finance Corporation, now SME Digital, launched a loan product called Taxi Nafaa that was advertised as a pathway for drivers to finance vehicles and join the taxi economy. In theory, Taxi Nafaa looked like a way to turn loan capital into livelihoods. In practice, it has become a symbol of how policy can go wrong when design, implementation and regulation are out of sync.
According to the Drivers Association of Maldives, dozens of drivers who obtained Taxi Nafaa loans are now servicing monthly payments of around MVR 7,000 for vehicles they have never seen. At a press conference this week, association representative Ibrahim Niyaz described the scheme bluntly. “This is a massive scam,” he said. “The government should be held accountable. It’s unacceptable to burden drivers with debt for cars they haven’t received or been allowed to register.”
Drivers say the loans were disbursed after the current administration took office and around the time of the 2024 parliamentary elections. Yet more than a year later, many vehicles linked to the loans remain unregistered and unused. SME Digital has reportedly told borrowers that they must continue repayment even if they have not received a vehicle.
Taxi Nafaa is entangled with a separate policy decision that has tightened the gate into the sector. In 2024 the government revised taxi registration rules to once again require a garage letter. The previous administration had briefly relaxed the rule by allowing taxis to be registered on payment of a MVR 10,000 fee, but that change was suspended. In a city where parking space is scarce and land is heavily politicised, a garage letter requirement can determine who gets to own and register vehicles at all.
For the drivers trapped in Taxi Nafaa loans, these layers of policy do not look like an ecosystem. They look like a trap. They have debt and no car. They see rules that appear to protect established players, while their own attempts to enter the market are blocked by bureaucracy. The association has warned that 44 families are now stuck in debt with nothing to show for it and says it is willing to go to court.
Electric fleets and quiet revolts
While the Taxi Nafaa controversy grows, the government is preparing something much more visible. In February 2025 the state signed an agreement with the Maldives Transport and Contracting Company to implement the first phase of a Malé Taxi Line initiative, a public taxi fleet that will be entirely electric. The aim, according to MTCC, is to provide a safe, reliable and environmentally friendly taxi service in the Greater Malé region.
MTCC plans to hire 285 full time drivers on one year contracts, with extensions based on performance, as well as 122 part time drivers. Shifts will run eight hours a day, six days a week. The company and the Transport Minister have repeatedly told that the new fleet will not harm private taxi operators and that drivers can choose to join the state fleet or continue working independently.
Private operators are unconvinced. Taviyani Private Limited, which runs the Avas App, has warned that more than 10,000 people connected to the taxi sector could be affected if the government pushes ahead without serious consultation. The company has raised concerns about negative behaviours by some drivers, but also accused the state of allowing certain parties to register vehicles on state owned land while restricting the general public.
The Drivers Association is even more direct. At the same press conference where they denounced Taxi Nafaa, Niyaz argued that the government taxi fleet would fail precisely because it was being designed without meaningful input from existing drivers. He said the only realistic solution to the capital’s taxi problems was the introduction of meters, not more cars. “Without the drivers’ word, without the drivers’ consultation, the taxi problem cannot be solved, even with more cars,” he said.
Their statement comes against a wider policy shift known as the Malé Fahi Programme, which seeks to tackle congestion through measures that include vehicle limits and new parking rules. Taxi drivers view the state fleet as part of a broader intervention into their business, one that risks treating them as obstacles to urban planning rather than as partners in delivering a public service.
Passengers as collateral
Caught between a stubbornly meterless system, a contested loan scheme and a looming state fleet, passengers continue to navigate the taxi market mostly on its own terms.
Transport authorities encourage complaints and occasionally stage inspections at airport queues. Yet the pattern repeats. Taxi centres and drivers respond aggressively when fares are capped or adjusted. Regulatory efforts stop short of the kind of daily enforcement that would convince riders that the official rate card means something. Complaints via social media, QR codes and Viber hotlines can lead to case by case interventions, but they have not shifted the everyday power imbalance between the person behind the wheel and the person trying to get home.
There is also the question of who the system really serves. Avas Ride and similar apps have undoubtedly made it easier to hail a car, but they have not eliminated ghost bookings or refusals. State rhetoric about modernising the sector through an electric fleet comes at the same moment that dozens of low income drivers discovered that their own road into the industry ran straight into a wall of delayed registrations and unanswered letters.
In medieval England, kings struggled to exert control over local lords who ran bridges and roads as private toll gates. The crown claimed authority, but travellers knew that real power lay with the baron who controlled the crossing. Malé’s taxi market feels similar. The state announces regulations, promises meters and launches public fleets. Yet on a humid night at the airport or on a crowded corner of Majeedhee Magu, it is the driver and the informal rules of the queue that decide who moves and who waits.
A meter will not solve everything. It will need careful calibration to Maldivian incomes and fuel costs, and a regulator willing to enforce it against both state fleets and private operators. It would, however, put passengers and drivers on the same page about what a trip is worth and strip away some of the guesswork that currently defines every ride. That would not turn taxis into a charity. It would simply acknowledge that in an island city this dense and this dependent on four wheeled transport, the right to move should not feel like a private negotiation controlled by whichever small fiefdom happens to hold the keys.
