Nairobians witnessed very intense demonstrations that caused lots of traffic snarl-ups in many places within the county. The demos involved UBER-partner drivers alongside other local taxi hailing providers such as little and taxify that protested against reduced earnings occasioned by low rates as well as frequent promos targeting to increase riders on their respective taxi hailing services. Finally, UBER has come out to defend it’s activities with below statement.
Our mission as a technology company is to provide safe, reliable and affordable transportation to all Kenyans at all times. This can only happen when there is trust on both sides with riders feeling safe with their driver-partners and driver-partners feeling safe and comfortable to transport their passengers.
Early this week, some driver-partners expressed concerns around their earnings in relation to the promotions Uber in Kenya has championed with a goal to attract riders to use the app thus driver-partners can take these trips and spend less time sitting idle waiting for rides. In light of these concerns, Uber in Kenya would like to state as follows:
- From June 8th 2017 Uber in Kenya has been running a variety of promotions aimed at encouraging riders in Nairobi to take trips with Uber while continuing to offer safe reliable and affordable transportation.
- We communicated to all driver-partners how Uber was covering all costs of the promotions and about the hourly guarantees we put in place during the promotion to ensure that they would benefit. We also communicated to riders encouraging them to participate in these promotion(s).
On the same breath, this week we had incidents where some riders and driver-partners have faced acts of intimidation and violence while they were using the app.
Uber has a zero tolerance policy regarding violence or intimidation. This type of behavior is unacceptable, and should anyone be found compromising the safety of others using the app, as per our community guidelines, they will be reported to law enforcers and if the person is an Uber driver-partner, their access to the Uber app will be deactivated.
We are closely monitoring the situation to ensure that riders get to their destination safely. Our internal security experts and law enforcement response teams are working tirelessly to help wherever possible.
We ask our community to continue staying vigilant and to report any incidents to us through Uber’s in-app help feature found in the menu bar accessible from the top left corner of your app.