Rene Vollgraaff
SOUTH Africa’s most populous city is considering regulations for car-booking service Uber Technologies in the province, addressing the concerns of the taxi industry.
The City of Johannesburg was consulting with the government of Gauteng province on how to introduce new rules, which could include compliance with laws designed to increase the involvement of black people in the economy, Christine Walters, the city’s mayoral committee member for transport, said yesterday.
“We will request that the province makes the regulations and the guidelines,” she said.
“The city would like a South African flavour of black economic empowerment with Uber,” Walters added.
Founded in 2009, San Francisco-based Uber connects drivers with passengers via mobile applications on smartphones in more than 300 cities. The company, which does not own the vehicles or employ the drivers, has taken business from existing taxi companies and was the subject of violent protests from competitors in Paris last week.
“Since early 2014, Uber and its partners have been engaged with the city, province and the national government,” Uber’s Africa spokesman Mwambu Wanendeya said by e-mail.
“The City of Johannesburg has recognised that Uber is and will be an important part of the public transport system.”
The City of Johannesburg was meeting with representatives of the local taxi industry to hear their concerns about Uber, which include who has the right to use certain routes, Walters said.
The city will also work on the digitisation of the public- transport industry to better compete with the US company, which started operating in Johannesburg in 2013 and is now available in four South African cities.
Uber drivers had taken passengers on more than 2 million trips in South Africa this year, compared with about 1 million last year, Wanendeya said.
“People like it, the customer likes it, what do you do if the customer likes something and there is a demand for it?” Walters said. “You either become part of the change and the future or you can remain behind.” – Bloomberg