Debated in Parliament on 2 Nov 2020.
Mr Shawn Huang Wei Zhong asked the Minister for Transport (a) whether there are plans to ensure that ride hailing and delivery platforms play an active role with their platform partners to strengthen and secure medical and accident protection of their partners, develop pathways to acquire skills and build up their platform partners' ability to retire; and (b) whether there are plans to ensure fair and reasonable access to the platform and sufficient protection of these platform partners from taking on unnecessary business risks.
The Government, the National Private Hire Vehicles’ Association (NPHVA) and ride-hail operators have been working together to ensure that drivers and riders are adequately covered by insurance, as a matter of good industry practice. Today, Grab and Gojek are providing their drivers with medical, accident and also Prolonged Medical Leave insurance to cover them for income losses from extended periods of illness. This complements tripartite efforts, such as the taxi Drive and Save scheme and the GrabCar Driver Medisave Match programme, which encourage drivers to make regular contributions to their Medisave.
Regulations also play a part. From 1 December 2020, food delivery platform operators will be required by law to insure their riders using active mobility devices against third-party liability, to cover expenses arising from accidents that can occur in the course of work.
As part of our national SkillsFuture movement, ride-hail operators have also been supporting their drivers to pick up new skills. For example, Grab recently partnered Ngee Ann Polytechnic, the Employment and Employability Institute and the NPHVA to roll out training programmes. It has also developed a career portal to help drivers who wish to transition out of driving.
Under the new Point-to-Point Transport (P2P) regulatory framework, P2P operators are not allowed to impose exclusivity restrictions on their drivers. That way, drivers can work for multiple platforms at the same time. We will continue to strike a balance between providing flexibilities to drivers and ensuring that platform operators continue to have an incentive to innovate and differentiate themselves in providing good services to commuters.
PAPERCUTS