Taking a taxi is often an obstacle course for Marrakchis. The scene plays out daily: free taxis that don’t stop, drivers who demand flat rates without turning on the meter, and Moroccans left stranded under crushing heat. A reality widely documented by users themselves.
“I spent more than 30 minutes to try to get a taxi. Even when they were free, not a single taxi stopped”
« I spent more than 30 minutes trying to get a taxi. Not one stopped, » a user tells TelQuel. Finally, a driver pulls over. And asks him for 40 dirhams, without a meter, for a ride that normally costs ten. The user refuses, takes out his phone, and orders a ride-hail, which arrives in 2 minutes. « Instead of transporting a Moroccan for 10 dirhams, I much prefer a foreigner who’s going to give me at least 50 dirhams, » admits a Marrakchi petit taxi driver. The Marrakchi has become a bad customer. The tourist, a cash cow.
Openly admitted discrimination
The sorting happens right at the door. Before he has even given his destination, the customer is sized up: presumed nationality, attire, accent. Marrakchis, who have no choice but to get around in their own city, find themselves facing a public service that has been corrupted, turned into a machine for milking tourists.
This practice raises two simple questions: what is the point of a meter if no one uses it? And what is the point of a permit, issued by local authorities, if its holder can refuse, with no consequences, the customers he is supposed to transport?
When drivers ask for 50 dirhams instead of 10 for a ride, five times the regulated fare, this is no longer a matter of incivility. It is the sign of a parallel system, tolerated, that turns every ride into a negotiation and every Moroccan user into an adjustment variable.
Open season on ride-hailing
While taxis pick and choose their customers, ride-hails are being hunted down. And not only by taxi representatives. The police are getting involved. A user recounts being approached in plainclothes as he got out of a ride-hail: « A plainclothes police officer approached me and asked whether it was a ride-hail or someone I knew. I told him it was a ride-hail, and he asked me to show him the app. He took screenshots. »
The penalties? Vehicle impounded for two weeks, license suspended for three months, a 400-dirham fine. An administrative strictness that stands out when compared to the leniency enjoyed by taxis that refuse to use their meters.
The petit taxi sector is governed by the Dahir of November 12, 1963, which requires the meter to be activated as soon as a customer is picked up. With the practice of « imposed flat rates » having become widespread in major tourist cities, a circular from the Ministry of the Interior, issued in December 2024, reaffirmed this obligation. The same goes for refusal of service, which is not merely an incivility. The Minister of Justice publicly described it as a « délit, » reminding that the operating license requires the driver to transport the customer to the destination of his choice, without conditions or imposed route. The penalties provided for in the regulations in force range from temporary withdrawal of the permit to impounding of the vehicle, as well as fines that can reach several hundred dirhams.
But these penalties, for the most part, remain a dead letter. The taxi sector falls exclusively under the Ministry of the Interior, and not the Ministry of Transport, which creates an administrative blind spot repeatedly denounced by sector unions. Without a unified Transport Code, without effective enforcement on the ground, the law remains, in Marrakech as elsewhere, a theoretical text that drivers can ignore with complete peace of mind.
The municipality passes the buck
Contacted by TelQuel, a member of the Municipal Council of the ochre city specifies that aggrieved citizens must file a complaint with the Marrakech taxi registration office, providing the taxi’s identification number or its license plate. « This problem has been growing in recent years. It has to stop, » the elected official reacts. The problem: « The municipality does not have the authority to force taxi drivers to respect the law, » he emphasizes.
On the ride-hailing issue, the same councilor points to Rabat. The prohibition of these platforms, he explains, falls under the Ministry of the Interior, the only body empowered to legalize this category of transporters. He nevertheless acknowledges that integrating ride-hails would be decisive in diversifying an urban transport offering that is running out of steam.
The elected official nevertheless qualifies his statement: complaints, coming from Moroccan citizens as well as foreign tourists, are reportedly regularly being sent to the authorities concerning disputes with ride-hail drivers. Police officers have even reportedly told him about more serious cases, such as assaults and rapes, attributed to drivers operating through these platforms. Very real incidents, which fuel the perception of insecurity.
Except that this insecurity, precisely, has part of its roots in the sector’s shaky status. Keeping ride-hails in informality mechanically reduces the platforms’ ability to secure their operations: no stable identification of drivers, no enforceable disciplinary framework, no genuine institutional cooperation. An operator whose existence depends on the calendar of « hamlas, » sometimes tolerated, sometimes targeted, cannot calmly structure the vetting of its drivers or the monitoring of rides. The picture, then, is not binary. But it in no way erases the initial observation: it is forced clandestinity that weakens, not the other way around.
With the 2030 World Cup approaching, which will draw thousands of supporter-tourists to Morocco who are accustomed to ride-hails in their home countries, the issue of modern urban transport regulation is becoming urgent. A legal framework for ride-hails, effective enforcement of penalties against recalcitrant taxi drivers, and real oversight of the sector: Marrakech, the Kingdom’s tourist showcase, deserves better than a two-tier public service.
Written in French by Younes Saoury, edited in English by Eric Nielson
