At the tail end of 2019, the Malaysian government gave the green light to bike-hailing services, with pilot tests starting in January 2020. There’s also Dego which returned to operation providing bike-hailing services at around the same time. But now, the government has said that it has no plans to give the go ahead for bike-hailing services in the country.
Deputy Transport Minister Henry Sum Agong cites the safety and welfare of passengers in Parliament. More specifically, he says the high death rates of bike riders and pillion riders caused by accidents as the reason for this decision.
The statement was in response to a question by Julau MP Larry Sng, who asked about the Ministry’s plans of making bike-hailing a form of complementary public transport.
It’s quite the about turn, considering the green light given, the pilot tests, and the return of Dego in early 2020. At the time, the pilot tests was said to last six months, and the data collected from it to be used to create the necessary regulations for the industry. But as Muar MP Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman points out, the Deputy Transport Minister cites the general stats for bike accidents rather than the industry-specific stats for bihe-hailing in the six-month trial period.
But then again, it’s not like the government that made the decision back in 2019 and the one that made this one are the same government. There’s also the COVID-19 pandemic struck hard in the middle of the pilot test period.
(Source: Parlimen Malaysia / YouTube)
