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Friday, July 18, 2025

Uber warned PH drivers could be charged

by

20170124

Uber of­fi­cials yes­ter­day met in a closed door meet­ing with sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and Min­is­ter of Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan, to find a way for the ser­vice to be­gin legal­ly op­er­at­ing in T&T.

How­ev­er, they were im­me­di­ate­ly warned of the il­le­gal­i­ty of us­ing "PH" dri­vers to trans­port trav­ellers.

The meet­ing was held at the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port and was al­so at­tend­ed by Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er Wayne Richards and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that this was the first time all par­ties were meet­ing on the mat­ter, al­though Uber had re­quest­ed a meet­ing since No­vem­ber last year.

Uber of­fi­cials were told that it was their re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure a meet­ing was grant­ed be­fore set­ting up op­er­a­tions, but yes­ter­day's meet­ing was not to crit­i­cise them (Uber) but rather to find a way for­ward.

Dur­ing the meet­ing, Uber of­fi­cials were in­formed that pri­vate cars be­ing used for hire in T&T was an il­le­gal prac­tice.

GML un­der­stands that the Gov­ern­ment al­so wants Uber to de­clare cer­tain in­for­ma­tion, such as their op­er­a­tions, cor­po­rate iden­ti­fi­ca­tions, struc­tures, tax­a­tion arrange­ments, em­ploy­ment con­tracts and in­sur­ance.

Uber has main­tained that it has in­sur­ance with Guardian Hold­ings.

The Gov­ern­ment has re­port­ed­ly in­di­cat­ed that it un­der­stands the ben­e­fits of Uber, but told the com­pa­ny it must bring the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion be­fore any steps can be tak­en to dis­cuss reg­u­lar­is­ing "PH" cars.

De­spite its il­le­gal­i­ty, �ber was not told to halt it op­er­a­tions but was in­formed of the T&T law which says a pri­vate car can­not be used for hire, mean­ing that an Uber dri­ver could be charged by po­lice.

Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Uber via email yes­ter­day to find out if it will be sus­pend­ing op­er­a­tions un­til the doc­u­men­ta­tion is pro­vid­ed, but up to press time Uber had not re­spond­ed.


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