We welcome our Minister of Transport, YB Anthony Loke’s announcement today for a ‘soft landing’ approach in enforcing the new e-hailing regulations. On behalf of our Grab community, we are truly appreciative, as within hours today, we had already experienced a drop of almost 20% in the number of driver-partners on the road, which resulted in difficulties for our passengers in getting a ride, and a loss of income for many of our driver-partners. 

We think this is a fair decision by the Minister, a stark departure from statements made by certain parties against our drivers. It was alleged that our drivers were given twelve months to complete the process, and are now making excuses and left things to the last minute. Multiple key requirements such as training and examinations were formalised only three months ago, while others were put in place just days ago, such as e-hailing sticker designs that were shared with e-hailing operators last week. 

Our immediate focus turns to helping to solve and unblock capacity issues in the authorities’ branches and processes that were not designed to handle such a large volume of applications. Since the start of the various processes from mid-April, most of our manpower has been focused on unblocking these capacity constraints, including to arrange large exam halls to avoid the backlog at driving schools, and to streamline the PSV application process by collating and submitting documents on behalf of our drivers to JPJ for processing.

In the next three months, we commit to continue building upon our programs, such as ‘Pakej Pikul Bersama’, that we designed to help our driver-partners reduce the costs and time involved in meeting the various regulatory requirements. It has been a challenging few months for us, the authorities and especially our drivers, who have shown great resilience and patience in navigating an unprecedented regulatory process. We are grateful and heartened to see such a positive response from our driver community so far. 

Ultimately, we do believe that the tremendous effort, especially by our driver-partners, will strengthen our resolve to improve access to safe, affordable transportation, while creating income opportunities for all via the digital economy. 

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