News about ride-hailing/delivery service Grab is often negative.
Those range from overcharging, abuse and monopolism. Most of all, spotty compliance with multimillion-peso government penalties.
Days ago the Philippine Competition Commission fined Grab P9 million. That’s due to Grab’s failure to fully refund customers three years after PCC ordered it.
PCC had imposed three refunds: P5.05 million in overcharges, November 2019; P14.15 million in unfulfilled voluntary commitments, December 2019; P6.25 million in more overprices, October 2020.
Grab claimed it couldn’t refund customers who don’t subscribe to its GrabPay Wallet or haven’t filled up its Know-Your-Customer form. PCC rejected the alibis.
The new P9 million is on top of previous P63.7 million in PCC fines.
Why is Grab so defiant? Why does it get away with violations?
Clearly, the Land Transport Franchising and Regulatory Board is coddling Grab. LTFRB officials are liable for corruption.
One case is open and shut. In 2018 LTFRB found Grab to have overcharged three million customers. Joint Administrative Order 2014-01 – among the Dept. of Transport, Land Transport Office and LTFRB – prescribes P5,000 fine for every count. That meant P15-billion total penalty for Grab.
But LTFRB disobeyed JAO 2014-01. It fined Grab only P10 million on pretext that P15 billion was “unrealistic.”
There’s worse. Five years after the “final and executory” fine of merely P10 million, Grab hasn’t paid and LTFRB hasn’t collected.
Proof is in a report to the LTFRB brass. Submitted Jan. 5, 2023, “2018 Decided Cases-Complaints” states:
• Date of Order – Sept. 7, 2018;
• Reference No. – CO-EB-2018-04-0039;
• Operator – My Taxi Ph Inc./Grab;
• Violation – Charging P2 per minute of travel time without authority;
• Fine/Penalty – P10,000,000;
• Remarks – Respondent to submit a report of compliance one week from the time the rebate has been fully implemented;
• Amount Paid, Official Receipt No., Date Paid – (blank).
Signatory was LTFRB Information Systems Management Division chief Nida Quibic.
Past and present LTFRB chairmen and members are liable.
The Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act (R.A. 3019) is clear:
“Section 3(e). Causing any undue injury to any party, including the Government, or giving any private party any unwarranted benefits, advantage or preference in the discharge of his official administrative or judicial functions through manifest partiality, evident bad faith or gross inexcusable negligence.
“This provision shall apply to officers and employees of offices or government corporations charged with the grant of licenses or permits or other concessions.”
LTFRB is lenient with Singapore-registered Grab but strict with locals. Daily at LTFRB taxi drivers queue to pay P5,000 overcharging fine – which they had to borrow.
Since start of ride-hailing in the Philippines, LTFRB favored Grab against giant Uber. The sole competitor left. Small local outfits failed to gain market shares. GoJek, Indonesia’s largest, was barred for foreign ownership in excess of 40 percent in a public utility – an issue that LTFRB let Grab skirt.
Grab presently faces more overcharging complaints. “Surge rates” are arbitrary and unauthorized, says ex-LTFRB member Ariel Inton.
Aside from P45 sedan booking fee, Grab collects P2 per minute plus P15 per kilometer, then doubles that during rush hours. But rush hours can be any time of day or night based on Grab’s secret algorithm, “thus subject to abuse,” says Inton, now head of Lawyers for Commuters Safety and Protection.
Grab also collects P85 base fare for rides less than four kilometers to, it says, “discourage short trips.” Discriminatory, Inton rails.
Grab is muzzling into the motorcycle-taxi sector, consumerists cry. In August 2022, Grab told the Securities and Exchange Commission it had acquired 99.8 percent of MoveIt, one of only three firms allowed in the government’s dry run.
Quasi-judicial SEC can cancel Grab’s corporate registration for repeated breaches.
Grab’s Malaysian cofounder-CEO Anthony Tan has mastered Filipino bureaucratic “kalakaran” (mode). Last January he hosted a banquet for President Marcos Jr.’s 75-man delegation to the World Economic Forum in Davos.
In a subsequent Malacañang meeting, Tan dazzled Marcos Jr. and LTFRB officials claiming he can employ half-a-million Filipinos. That can only happen if he alone is allowed to expand ride-hailing, delivery, motorcycle-taxi nationwide. Meaning, LTFRB should let him alone accredit drivers.
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