The e-hailing application can help attract more people to use public transport says Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Ab Aziz Kaprawi.

He said the application could overcome the problem of the first and last mile connectivity for passengers of other modes of public transport.

"This is proven in a research study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers that 59 per cent of the application users had never hailed a taxi before this.

"The research also showed 52 per cent of taxi passengers use e-hailing application to get a taxi," he said when opening a 'National Symposium on Logistics and Transport' themed 'Taxi and Uberisation Way forward' here Friday.

The average number of trips recorded using Grab and Uber e-hailing services was between 300,000 and 350,000 monthly.

Ab Aziz said the technology is seen as a positive push for a change in the country's taxi service under the Taxi Industry Transformation Programme (TITP) announced in August.

"Currently only 14 per cent of taxi drivers are using the e-hailing application to obtain passengers," he said.

He said the application had become the choice of public transport users in the country as it was easier to book, the fare is cheaper and passengers could get an estimate of the fare before starting the journey.

Apart from that, passengers also felt safer with the availability of information on the driver and the vehicle as well as being able to track the hired car via the application within a shorter waiting time.

Earlier, he witnessed the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Universiti Pertahanan Nasional Malaysia (UPNM) and The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Malaysia (CILTM).

UPNM was represented by its vice-chancellor General Tan Sri Zulkifli Zainal Abidin while CILTM was represented by its president Datuk Abd Radzak Abd Malek.

The MoU is aimed at sharing expertise in developing the transportation and logistics industries and to produce graduates in the field. -- BERNAMA