HONG KONG

Taxi drivers plan anti-Uber march, threatening to escalate to citywide protest

Armed with information on 800 alleged illegal ride-hailing cases, Hong Kong’s disgruntled taxi drivers are preparing to step up their fight against Uber with a series of large-scale actions.

In a joint letter to the industry, the Motor Transport Workers General Union and the Taxi Drivers & Operators Association have called for 300 cabbies to join a protest planned for January 15 at the Chief Executive’s Office in Admiralty.

The two taxi groups declared that, through undercover operations over the past few months, they had uncovered about 800 cases of Uber drivers illegally plying their trade, and reported 100 of them to police.

The organisations plan to submit the 800 cases to Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and the Executive Council before marching to the Department of Justice to call for immediate prosecution in the 100 reported cases and prompt police investigations into the rest.

They threatened to escalate their fight into a citywide protest if the government did not respond to their call within a week.

“Since Uber has entered Hong Kong’s market, the income of taxi drivers has dropped drastically. It’s time for us to kick Uber out from Hong Kong,” the letter read.

“We will demand that the chief executive give us a response within one week … if there is no response after that, we may escalate our actions to the whole industry to protest against the government’s inaction for strangling the taxi industry.”

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