LISBON, Sept. 25 (Xinhua) -- Taxi drivers in the Portuguese capital as well as in Porto and Faro entered their seventh day of protests on Tuesday, with many having spent the entire week in their parked cars.
"The protest continues with the same commitment," said Carlos Ramos, of the Portuguese Taxis Federation.
The protest is against a new law drafted to regulate taxi app firms, which undercut the rate of regular taxi services. Conventional taxi drivers say the draft law does not go far enough.
"We're waiting for the government to yield and no one is going anywhere until Wednesday at the earliest," he said in comments made to the Lusa Portuguese News Agency.
The taxi drivers plan to move their protest to outside the parliament building to coincide with a plenary session of Portuguese parliament on Wednesday.
For the moment, the protesters remain exactly where they parked their cars last Wednesday morning. Many drivers have even slept every night in their cars.
In Lisbon, taxis occupy the bus lanes of Avenida Liberdade, one of the city's main arteries. The boulevard is now open to traffic after having been closed to all but buses and bikes when the protest first began.
In Porto, taxi drivers remain parked on Avenida dos Aliados while in Faro they are stationed on the road to the airport.
There is now a possibility of Porto and Faro drivers joining their colleagues in Lisbon to protest outside parliament on Wednesday.
"That scenario is being explored," said Jose Monteiro, vice president of the National Association of Road Carriers and Passenger Cars (ANTRAL), "it depends on how the situation evolves, if our fight has to harden."
Talk of "hardening" the protest began on Monday when Prime Minister Antonio Costa refused to meet representatives of the taxi drivers, sending one of his advisers instead.
"These mass concentrations will continue until there is open dialogue and a solution to this impasse is found," said Monteiro, speaking on behalf of the Porto protesters.
After a series of go-slow protests last year, taxi drivers were promised that the taxi app industry would be regulated. A new law was drafted and is due to come into effect Nov. 1, but the protesters say it still puts them at a disadvantage and they want to prevent its implementation.
Popularly known as the "Uber Law", so-called because of the ride-sharing company Uber, the new legislation also applies to the Taxify, Cabify and Chauffeur Prive platforms, in addition to Uber.
Since the protests began, only the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) have come out in support of the taxi drivers and called for the new law to be repealed.
