{"id":240627,"date":"2018-04-25T11:14:42","date_gmt":"2018-04-25T09:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=240627"},"modified":"2018-04-25T11:19:23","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T09:19:23","slug":"uber-a-big-step-closer-to-being-fully-regulated-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/240627\/uber-a-big-step-closer-to-being-fully-regulated-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Uber a big step closer to being fully regulated in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Parliament has officially<\/a> <\/strong>passed the National Land Transport Amendment Bill, which among other amendments, seeks to regulate ride-sharing services in the country.<\/p>\n

Originally published for public comment in 2013, the bill has seen a number of changes made since its inception including the amendment of\u00a0 the definition of a \u201cmetered taxi service\u201d to cater for electronic hailing (e-hailing) services in the country.<\/p>\n

Effectively this means that the e-hailing drivers will be treated no differently from other metered taxi drivers across South Africa – including the requirement that each driver will require their own\u00a0 operating license.<\/p>\n

The amendments also allow for the minister of transport (Blade Nzimande) to make additional regulations for e-hailing services – including possible changes to the smartphone app to allow for a clearer idea of who exactly is driving the vehicle, the route it is taking and how much it will cost.<\/p>\n

The bill will now be sent to the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) for concurrence, and then signed into law by president Cyril Ramaphosa.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Financial<\/a> <\/strong>Mail in March, GM for Uber sub-Saharan Africa Alon Lits, said that the amendments should have little affect on the company’s current operations in the country.<\/p>\n

“Contrary to perceptions, Uber drivers are licensed and regulated in the same way as metered taxis,” Lits said.<\/p>\n

“The new rules won\u2019t really change anything [in practice] as metered-taxi operating licences are already given to Uber drivers with the understanding that they will be using ride-hailing technology,” he said.<\/p>\n

The conflict between e-hailing and metered-taxi drivers has been a serious point of concern for both government and Uber over the last year, with a number of drivers attacked and killed in the time period.<\/p>\n

The issue escalated to the point where Uber published<\/a> <\/strong>a list of\u00a0 15 ‘no-go zones’ in July last year, where it would not\u00a0pick up or drop off riders due to the ongoing clashes.<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0You can now tip your Uber and UberEATs drivers through the app<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parliament has passed a new bill which will regulate Uber in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":115700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26,6457],"class_list":["post-240627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline","tag-uber"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240627"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240655,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240627\/revisions\/240655"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}