Saudi: TGA To Suspend E-hailing Drivers’ App Accounts For Cancelling Five Trips Within A Month
The Transport General Authority (TGA) announced that the amended Regulation governing the activity of taxis, taxi brokers and e-hailing cars came into force on Wednesday.
This follows the approval of the updated Regulation by Minister of Transport and Logistics and Chairman of the Board of Directors of TGA Eng. Saleh Al-Jasser a few months ago. According to the amendments, the account of the application of e-hailing car drivers will be suspended temporarily in the event of cancelling five trips within a month. E-hailing vehicle is a private vehicle used to provide public transport services to passengers who book through the designated electronic applications.
The Regulation has been updated with necessary amendments aimed at further improving the services in this sector and addressing major challenges facing investors, beneficiaries and workers. This would contribute to improving the experience of beneficiaries, workers and investors as well as the quality of services provided, besides facilitating procedures with regard to carrying out activities, and stimulating and encouraging investment in this sector, in order to achieve the objectives of the National Strategy for Transport and Logistics Services.
The updated Regulation included a set of amendments, most notably, facilitating some procedures related to investors, addressing the mechanism for the driver to know the dropping location before accepting or rejecting the request, tackling with the growing tendency of trip cancellation by the driver after accepting it on passenger transportation applications by temporarily freezing the driver’s activity in the event that he exceeds five cancellation of trips after acceptance in a calendar month.
It is also obligatory for the carrier to establish a mechanism to return the lost luggage or personal belongings to their owners and beneficiaries, in addition to containing the growing phenomenon of practicing public taxi activity in private cars in an illegal way.
The amendments also included clarifying the scope of practicing taxi activities and increasing licensees’ compliance rates by continuing the process of electronic linking to the system specified by the authority, and providing this system with the required data, and other modifications aimed at improving the beneficiaries’ experience.
The TGA is continuously working to identify the challenges facing investors, beneficiaries and workers in transport activities, with the aim of developing effective solutions to address these challenges, which contributes to raising and improving the efficiency and quality of the services provided.
