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Ride-sharing biker Hamid Mia starts his journey in the morning and works till night. He earns less than Tk 1,000 per day and supports a six-member family with the money, which is a difficult job.
“But police harassment and high service charges of ride-sharing companies are making matters worse for me,” he told The Business Post.
Like him, several drivers claimed that police sue them in false cases and then impose fines to get a portion of the amount. They have to pay bribes if they do not want to be sued. This makes it challenging for them to provide ride-sharing services.
“If I earn Tk 1,000 a day, I have to spend Tk 300 on petrol and Tk 70-80 on bike maintenance. In addition, service providers like Uber and Pathao take away 25 per cent and 15 per cent of drivers’ earnings respectively in service charges. For Uber car drivers, it is 28 per cent,” Hamid told The Business Post.
On Monday, a group of drivers announced a 24-hour nationwide strike to press home six demands, including an end to police harassment.
Other demands include recognising app-based drivers as professionals by evaluating their work and working hours as per the law; reducing company service charge to 10 per cent and stopping termination of drivers based on false allegations; allocating parking spaces for ride-sharing vehicles in Dhaka, Chattogram, and Sylhet; exempting listed drivers from paying advanced income tax (AIT); and returning the vehicles listed under AIT last year but seized by police for not paying the tax.
Monday’s protests erupted soon after a driver named Shawkat Ali set his motorcycle on fire in the capital’s Badda area while venting his frustration and anger on a police sergeant, who attempted to penalise him for parking rules violations. The video of the incident went viral on social media.
Additional Police Commissioner (traffic) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Munibur Rahman said the allegation that police get 30 per cent of the fine imposed in cases filed against ride-sharing drivers is true.
He said policemen get it according to their higher officials’ instructions.
“But it is not like traffic police officials file cases arbitrarily. They do so only if a rider violates the law,” he said.
Driver Shimul Ahmed said police mostly check whether drivers negotiate fares to carry passengers instead of charging the amount determined by the apps.
“But negotiating fares helps us save the money charged by service providers,” he said.
Both drivers and passengers said ride-sharing used to be operated as per the service providers’ rules, but now there are various anomalies as some drivers negotiate fares to earn more and skip paying service charges.
This increases security risk, passengers said. This is because drivers charge much more than the fares determined by the apps and sometimes refuse to drop passengers off at the exact destinations.
“It happens often. If drivers think the fare set by the apps is not satisfactory, they try to negotiate and ask me to pay that,” said Asif Mahmud, a regular user of ride-sharing services.
“This way, the apps have no information about which drivers are carrying passengers. There is a risk that drivers can drive to a secluded place and harm passengers. Well, passengers can harm drivers too,” he added.
One such incident took place on the night of August 25, 2019, on the Moghbazar-Malibagh flyover. A driver named Milon was killed and his bike was snatched.
Police said the killer had ridden the bike as a passenger. But as the journey was not arranged using the app, the killer’s identity could not be determined.
Ride-sharing services were first introduced in the country in 2015, but they became popular in 2017. International ride-sharing service Uber launched its operations in the country that year. They initially offered car services and later added bikes. There are now several ride-sharing services, including Piickme, Shohoz, and OBhai, but Pathao and Uber dominate the market.
