Taxi drivers urged to register with e-hailing - Nancy

Minister in the Prime Minister's Department, Datuk Seri Nancy Shukri said currently there were only 14,000 taxi drivers registered with the e-hailing platform.

"Among the challenges faced in encouraging taxi drivers to use e-hailing technology are the drivers themselves who are not IT-savvy because of the age factor, and they consider taxi drivers who use the platform as rivals," she said during the Ministers' Question Time in the Dewan Rakyat, here, today.

She was replying to a supplementary question from Datuk Seri Irmohizam Ibrahim (BN-Kuala Selangor) on the government's efforts to encourage taxi drivers to use the e-hailing platform.

Nancy said taxi drivers should take advantage of the technology in improving their service quality and income, rather than looking at it as a competitor to the conventional method.

Malaysia created history when it became the first country to make e-hailing services such as Grab and Uber legally binding public transport services under the Land Public Transport (Amendment) Bill 2017 and the Commercial Vehicle Licensing Board (Amendment) Bill 2017, which were passed Parliament, last week.

Meanwhile, Nancy said the government was also constantly engaging with taxi drivers, including explaining the advantages of the e-hailing technology.

In addition, she said, the government had implemented various programmes to safeguard the welfare of taxi drivers and launched the Taxi Industry Transformation Programme to improve the quality of taxi services and to ensure the safety of taxi drivers.

"Giving RM5,000 grants to recipients of the individual taxi licence is one of the means to get them out of the leasing system with taxi companies that we find to be lopsided and not in favour of taxi drivers," she said.