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The Philippine Daily Inquirer reports that the Land Transportation and Franchising Regulatory Board (LTFRB) of the Philippines has ordered a one-month suspension of Uber's operations in the country.
The Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) has suspended for a month the operations of transport network company (TNC) Uber after it defied its July 26 order not to accept and activate new drivers into its platform.
In response, Uber issued a short statement, saying: "Uber received an order around 6 p.m. tonight (August 14) to completely stop operations. We are studying the order at the moment. We will update our riders and drivers as soon as we can."
In its cease-and-desist order that was released and took effect on Monday night, the LTFRB said that Uber was "irresponsible" when it continued to accept and activate new drivers into its platform.
[...] Recognizing that their order meant that thousands of Uber's drivers would lose income for a month, the LTFRB recommended that Uber extend financial assistance to its affected drivers as a "form of good faith."
"[T]heir accredited peer-operators would not have suffered the current predicament were it not for the predatory actions of [Uber]," it said.
On July 26, the LTFRB ordered TNCs Grab and Uber to stop their acceptance and accreditation of new drivers as the agency ironed out issues concerning the ride-sharing industry.
However, the LTFRB found out that Uber defied its order, with the TNC even releasing a statement that partly read that "applications are being accepted but not processed" by them. On top of this, the LTFRB was also able to activate three of its cars into Uber's platform.
The company later issued a statement that it was complying with the order. Earlier today (August 15) they filed a motion for reconsideration which the LTFRB has denied.
(Score: 2) by n1 on Wednesday August 16 2017, @03:27AM
I used Uber for the first time recently, it was a good experience and certainly better than the standard taxi service in that particular country. There are problems with the business itself, Uber does appear to be as corrupt and immoral as the taxi mafia rackets, but it's just remotely corrupt rather than locally.
As someone that has spent a lot of time in the developing world, where the corruption is overt... You can get very high approval ratings if the population perceive the corruption to be working in their favor. It's still corruption, but it's the kind of corruption that means you pay a small bribe instead of a large fine, you can talk to the right people, drop the right names, and get some permits or licenses processed quicker or instantly without scrutiny. You can open a business and not have to pay taxes and health inspections at your restaurant because you always give the cops and local government a free meal. This of course has a negative impact on the government revenues, since they end up with a tiny fraction of the potential income from fines, taxes and fees. Which in turn increases those fees and generally puts more pressure on tourists and foreign businesses working to establish locally.
In the 'first world' corruption is still everywhere, but there's just a higher barrier to entry, usually starting in the tens of thousands of dollars. You can rarely pay a $10 bribe instead of a $50 fine.