During the opening of the 46th General Council meeting of the Church Of Pentecost Convention Centre in the Central Region, Vice President Dr Mahamadu Bawumia announced the next phase of his digitalisation agenda. He acknowledged the decline in the use of traditional taxis and trotros due to the increase in ride-hailing services such as Uber, Bolt, and Yango. To address this issue and increase patronage, he plans to bring traditional taxis and trotros onto digital platforms. He believes this will make it more convenient for ordinary Ghanaians to use these services. Dr Bawumia also stated that plans are underway to move all other public transport services onto a digital platform. As a politician, he believes this is the kind of initiative that will help address the issues faced by the people.
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“Taxi drivers came to see me in my office and one of their major problems that they presented to me and my team was that look our business is collapsing and I said what is the problem and they said now we have Uber and many people are not taking taxis as before. People want to feel safer and for other reasons, they will rather call Uber and bring us so Uber is taking our business. So how can you help us? So we sat down with my team and we said okay how can we help our taxi drivers to compete with Uber drivers so that they can also be doing same. So we set the team to work and the task was to digitise the operations of our regular taxis just as you have with Uber. I’m happy to say that that work has now been completed. And in the next couple of months, we will be able to place our taxis at least in greater Accra to start with all on an Uber-like platform. It is a practical solution to a practical problem and that is the sort of things we politicians should be focusing on. Later VIP buses, ayalolo, trotro etc are going to go on,” he stated.
