Customers left hungry as Grab bites into riders’ pay
PETALING JAYA: After staging a strike on Thursday, some GrabFoodMy riders are saying that they are planning another one on Oct 1 if the new payment structure is not revised by tomorrow.
“The company announced that our payment will be reduced from RM10 to RM5 per delivery.
“We raised our concerns with the company and when it was not addressed immediately, we stopped delivering food on Thursday from 11am.
“The strike was only supposed to last till 2pm but we extended it to evening,” said Amir, 21, a GrabFood rider, when contacted on Friday.
He said a lot of the riders were involved in the first strike, as the new payment structure was announced without first consulting them on Thursday morning.
“We will go on strike again on Monday if the company doesn’t offer us better terms as the new payment structure affects our income badly. Also, we don’t get EPF or Socso so our morale is really low,” he said.
“They should have consulted us first. As riders, we all look out for each other. We won’t hesitate to move to another food delivery company with more attractive payment schemes,” said another rider, Dose, 34.
The company has since apologised to its riders.
A Grab Malaysia spokesperson said: “Perhaps we should have clarified and explained the benefits clearly and at length. However, their disappointment and comments did not go unnoticed, as we have reviewed the incentives accordingly, with proper communications and explanations in place to help our riders understand the revised scheme much better.”
In the revised plan, the riders will still earn RM5 per delivery but they will get an extra RM4 during nonpeak hours and RM6 during peak hours, making the minimum RM9 and maximum RM11.
“So why did we do that? Easy – based on our data for the last four months the bulk of our orders are during peak hours which is 11am to 1pm and 6pm to 8pm,” the spokesperson said.
“Peak hours account for 70% of our volume.”
“We want to ensure we have sufficient riders to meet the volume of delivery and that our riders’ time is maximised.”
Grab Malaysia says the revised scheme has been communicated to its riders but the ones we contacted and most of the riders on the GrabFood Rider Malaysia Facebook page wanted the flat rate of RM10 and original incentives to be maintained.
Grab Malaysia has also apologised to customers, saying “we are doing the necessary to ensure that your grievances and refunds are made in proper order”.