Cabinet moved to legalize ride-hailing before lawsuit: spox

CAIRO – 22 March 2018: The Egyptian Cabinet’s official spokesperson Ashraf Sultan said on Thursday that the government has taken serious steps to regulate the operation of ride-hailing services before the recent controversial lawsuit demanding banning the service in the country.

The Cairo Administrative Court accepted on Tuesday a lawsuit demanding the full suspension of activities for the two popular ride-hailing companies, Uber and Careem, in Egypt.

Sultan noted in a phone call to Mehwar that the Cabinet submitted a draft law regulating the privately owned transport services to parliament on March 21 to be officially discussed.

He added that the draft law was first sent to the State Council’s legislation department for revision and to check if any further details need clarification. However, the Cabinet later decided to send it directly to the House of Representatives to be officially approved and ratified.

According to lawsuits filed previously by taxi drivers, the GPS-based applications, Uber and Careem use unlicensed private cars as taxicabs, and thus profit from an “illegal” activity.

It also mentioned that the two services are not legally regulated and affected the livelihood of the taxi drivers.

In 2016, Uber said that 30,000 drivers are using the service in Cairo as a source of income; the number of drivers who have joined the service has grown 73 times in one year, making Cairo the fastest-growing market for the company in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Uber started operation in Cairo and Giza in November 2014, and began in Alexandria a year later.

Careem, a Middle East competitor to Uber, said on Tuesday it has not received any request to stop operations in Egypt and will continue to operate normally.