Government will intervene to prevent abuse of ride hailing app — Nancy
KUCHING: The government will intervene should any ride hailing application in the country monopolise the price.
According to Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri, the government will intervene if any company monopolises and dominates the industry.
“We have the Competition Act 2010 where we can prevent any abuse of price especially if there is a dominating company in the industry,” said Nancy at the launching of BIMP-EAGA bus driver log book at Taxi Industry Transformation Workshop held at Dormani Rajah Court Hotel yesterday.
Nancy was commenting on the sale of Uber shares in South East Asia to Grab which is expected to dominate the ride hailing app industry in Malaysia.
Earlier on, Nancy said there is still a large number of conventional taxi drivers who are not aware of the government’s initiative to help them.
“For example, there are some taxi drivers who use the Grab application but still don’t know what e-hailing means. These are the challenges that they face as they adapt to changes.
“Under the Taxi Industry Transformation Programme ( TITP), Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak himself had approved several asisstance to conventional taxi drivers, such as the RM5,000 grant for them to change to a newer vehicle,” said Nancy.
She pointed out that those who were unsure of TITP initiative should go to the nearest Commercial Vehicle Licensing Board to get more information.
On the transnational log book system, Nancy said it was to enable the authority to monitor the bus service and improve safety of passengers.
“The log book will become the medium of communication and also to keep record of driver change every four hours or every 300km,” she said.
“Despite being a mandatory rule in Sarawak since 1996, the system is now being expanded to include express buses plying Sabah, Brunei and Sarawak,” she added.
Also present were LPKP state chairman who is also Limbang MP Hasbi Habibollah.