KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 31 — Local startup Dego Ride will resume its motorcycle e-hailing services once it has improved safety aspects as ordered by the Transport Ministry, said its chief executive officer Nabil Feisal Bamadhaj.
According to Nabil, the order came within 24-hours from its relaunch, adding that Dego Ride will halt its services temporarily until it is able to tighten several key safety aspects including information on the pick-up and drop-off destination locations.
“The ministry wants a key safety aspect of our service tightened since our relaunch. The key safety aspect is the pickup and destination locations.
“They proposed that we work with Prasarana, the operator of LRT, MRT and RapidKL to identify our hot pickup locations and match them to the public transport networks available.
“The main outcome we want to achieve is that the service will offer faster, shorter and safer trips for the daily commuters,” said Nabil when contacted by Malay Mail.
When asked what was lacking with Dego Ride’s previous safety aspects, Nabil said the ride service managed risk well since it started the e-hailing service by setting high requirements on a rider before they are approved to ferry passengers as Dego riders.
Potential riders were screened prior to approval of them to provide transportation services to the public with their personal motorcycles.
“We have proposed to the ministry that our new onboarding process includes a safety and training session endorsed by the ministry and the Land Public Transport Agency (APAD).
“After a stringent recruitment process, we allow our technology to define other safety aspects such as (limiting the) distance travelled to 3km.
“There are other features we are working on which will be revealed in due time apart from our collaboration with the government,” he added, indication a timeframe of about two months before the service returns.
Dego Ride has been defined as an alternative for short LRT or MRT trips or as “feeder buses”.
Dego Ride had previously operated a motorcycle e-hailing service before it was banned by the former administration, and continued to face resistance from the Pakatan Harapan government.
The transport ministry Anthony Loke has since said that it will ensure that no company will have a monopoly over the market.
He also said that the ministry will soon submit a report on the direction and mechanism for two-wheel taxi e-hailing services.
Rides can be ordered through a smartphone mobile app starting at RM2.50 for the first 1km and 60 sen for each following kilometre. Riders can only accept passengers of the same gender.
