Two former transportation ministers urged the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) to reconsider before implementing the “Uber clause,” the amendment to Article 103-1 of the Transportation Management Regulations (汽車運輸業管理規則), saying that it would not resolve the controversies caused by the ride-hailing company.
The amendment — which would treat taxi and vehicle rental services as separate businesses, with people hiring rental services needing to pay an hourly or daily rate — was proposed after the ministry determined that Uber offered a taxi service under the guise of a vehicle rental business.
The ministry is responding to all comments received during the 60-day consultation period for the amendment, which ended on Friday, it said, adding that it would start enforcing the amendment two months after formally announcing the change.
Photo: Cheng Wei-chi, Taipei Times
Thousands of Uber drivers on Sunday last week rallied on Ketagalan Boulevard after the amendment threatened to discontinue the company’s operations in Taiwan, former minister of transportation and communications Hochen Tan (賀陳旦) said in a letter to the editor in the Chinese-language Apple Daily last week.
Uber believes there is business potential in Taiwan because of the lack of a coherent policy governing taxis over the past 50 years, he added.
“The supply of taxis has far exceeded demand and the government has not cracked down on illegal taxis. Taxis are considered a part of social welfare in Taiwan, as it is a career option for unemployed people, but many people do not feel safe riding in taxis due to how taxi drivers act and how they maintain their vehicles,” he said.
Hochen questioned whether the taxi industry could change and whether people would accept the change if the government could keep taxi drivers from feeling threatened by limiting Uber’s development in Taiwan.
The amendment favors taxi drivers and elevates barriers for Uber, which would force some Uber drivers to go underground, he said, adding that the move would make it more difficult for the government to regulate such operators.
Uber and the taxi industry can coexist, he said.
The government should give taxi drivers a deadline by which to raise the quality of their services, such as newer vehicles, multiple payment options, online taxi-hailing apps and shorter work hours for drivers, Hochen said.
If taxi drivers do not improve the quality of their services, the government should stop waiving license taxes and other fees, he said.
Taxi drivers must have training and performance reviews administered by the taxi companies, Hochen said, adding that the drivers would need to give companies a cut of their revenue if their profits increased by getting assignments from more than one online platform.
Uber must report business data to local transportation officials and allocate a percentage of its profits to improving the quality of taxi services, he said, adding that Uber drivers must prove that they pay business taxes.
Former minister of transportation and communications Chen Chien-yu (陳建宇) said that the ministry would “enter a dead-end street” if it were to implement the amendment.
The ministry should follow the suggestion of Uber drivers by listing them in the Highway Act (公路法) as taxi services dispatched through online platforms, Chen said.
“That way, Uber could be regulated. The government should also loosen its grip on the cab fare mechanism by allowing people to hail taxis through smartphone apps, on which they could see the travel route and know how they would be charged. They could even be given leeway to haggle the fare,” he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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