In a society where most people work towards increasing their revenues and their profits, a young Romanian created the first company which offers its services for free for those in need. The 23-year old IT professional Alex Boabeş created a cab service called Taxi Gratis, which offers free cab rides to people who have health issues or emergencies, to old people, blind people and to those who do not have money for pay for a cab.

Boabes, who started the project together with a friend, uses his personal car and pays around RON 1,500 to RON 2,000 for gas every month, and the only thing he gets out of it is knowing he helped someone in need. He gets one to four orders a day, and during the night he works for an IT company. The friend with whom Boabes started the project withdrew in the meantime as he did not have time to do it anymore, but Boabes continued, and even plans to expand the service to other cities, and is looking for volunteers to do this.

The free cab is for the time being only available in the Second and Third Districts of Bucharest. The founder, who says people were at first reticent, as they believed nothing was for free, said the project is one of a kind in Romania, and probably in the world too.

Boabes says he sometimes got prank calls too, and once he drove to a place where no one was waiting for the cab, but that he still believes in people's good faith and asks them to get in touch and ask for the free service only when they have an emergency.

The young Romanian spends around 40 percent of his monthly income to keep the Free Cab project running. “Some people asked me why I started this project, when I could have contributed in other ways. It is true, I could have donated some money to charities, but I would have not been sure whether the money went to the right place. So I decided to get involved myself, to show it is possible!”, Boabes writes on the Free Cab's website. The idea behind the project came as the man too found himself in an emergency situation when he could not afford a cab, so he decided to help other people in the same situation.

The two phone numbers where the free cab service can be reached are (+4) 0785.728.749 and (+4) 0725.062.356, and those who cannot afford to call can text explaining the emergency and the cab service will call them back. More about the free cab service, here (in Romanian).

editor@romania-insider.com