The fanfare that greeted the arrival of Uber in Ghana in June of 2016 was phenomenal. There was a lot of write-ups and positive vibes running around. This is an app that aids transport seekers to be found by transporters. Simplicita. In a country where finding transportation and getting transportation can be very hectic and sometimes even dangerous, the arrival of Uber was a joy to many of us.
I speak today about Uber from the perspective of an Uber driver. I would like to share my experience as an Uber driver and my general impression of the service although I will chip in some thoughts which are expressed by my passengers about Uber. Now let’s start with the rates
Rates
Uber is way cheaper when compared to the taxi fares in the country. For a passenger, this is exciting. You get to roam in the city without fear of a mind-blowing fare at the end of your ride. I once drove a passenger from Haatso to Tawala beach around 5pm for the price of 25 cedis. Again, I drove a passenger from Ring Road central (around ATTC) to Melcom plus (North Kaneshie). The passenger left his stuff in the office so we had to return to his office to get it. He paid 6cedis for the entire trip. With a taxi, these fares would have cost about 40 cedis and 10 cedis respectively.
Although this may be exciting for passengers, it is not at all exciting for drivers. This is because of the percentage Uber charges drivers for each ride. 25% of each fare goes to Uber for maintenance of app, administrative costs and bla bla bla. True, they are the link between us and the customers and thus need to get something for their efforts but c’mon, 25%!? This means that what I made from the ride of 6 cedis is 4.50p. Yes, I drove someone from ATTC to North Kaneshie for 4.50p and no I am not talking about 1994 I am talking 2017.
The backbone of an arrangement like Uber is the driver. It is easy enough for any curious passenger to sign up for the service but if they request for a car and there is none or the nearest is thirty minutes away, most customers would opt for their traditional taxi. It goes without saying that the driver should be treated well for the service to prosper. With a transportation system like ours, customers are already screaming for a service such as Uber to aid them in their transit so it is clear why the success of this venture rests on the driver.
If Uber charges are low, if Uber takes a quarter of the meager fares for itself, it leaves the drivers with much too little to be smiling about and sooner rather than later, all the drivers would be reluctant to turn their Uber status on.
Ideally, Uber should have a structured billing system where the higher you earn, the higher Uber’s percentage is. For example if one makes 5 cedis from a trip, Uber should take let’s say 5% of the fee. If someone makes between 15- 20 cedis, Uber takes 8% and so on. This would ensure that when fares are low, the driver doesn’t feel bitter.
When the fare left with the driver is minimal, it lets the driver only focus on surges, which is what I am coming to next. The focus of drivers on surges means that there will be few drivers online, most waiting for surge offline, and this will cause a constant surge making customers unhappy and not patronizing the service.
Surges
Uber introduces surges to areas where they find that demand for drivers are high. A surge is basically a spike in fares for passengers. Uber introduces these spikes according to areas with the most demand. This means that if Dzorwulu has the highest demand for Uber drivers, the fare can be triple the normal fare. If Airport area has a medium demand, the rate could be twice the normal fare etc. This was introduced I believe to compensate drivers for the low fares during off peak hours (no surge hours).
However, I have noticed a challenge with that. A number of my passengers have complained about the prices they pay during these surges. They say that during the surges, sometimes the price is even higher than taxis hence they choose to go for taxis when there are surges. This means that drivers do not get to make money to balance what they lose to low pricing during off peak. As a driver, I feel used and dumped during surges.
Another challenge I have with surges is how fast they disappear. The driver app shows the drivers where surges are in the city by indicating the surge with some form of a heat map. The redder the area is, the higher the surge rate. Sometimes I am tempted to believe that surges are put on the map to get drivers to spread out to certain areas of the city, that’s it. On one occasion, I checked on my map and saw a deep red wave at Awoshie and its environs. I was then at Gimpa and thought driving all the way there just for surge was waste of fuel. As luck would have it, my next client was at Dome Pillar Two and was headed to Awoshie market. I felt lucky. I kept checking my map for the surge. Even at Kwashieman, the surge was still red hot and on. Ten minutes later, as I entered Awoshie and into the red zone, the surge was on. Just after I dropped the customer and calculated the fare, the map refreshed and voila, the surge was gone!
Another time I drove from Madina to East Legon for surge, as soon as I entered the surge zone, whoooosh! The surge was gone, I felt cheated.
It is one of two things- either Uber considers two riders asking for a vehicle in the same area as a surge, or my suspicions are true that they sometimes put the surge there to spread drivers out in town. If you wonder why they would want to spread drivers out in the city, it is because when they spread drivers out in town, they increase the chances of Uber passengers getting a driver in their hood when they need one.
I think moving forward, Uber should place surges especially at night. There is no surge at night, ever. Before you think that is how it is supposed to be because there is no traffic, let me show you my point. Nighttime is when most criminals decide to strike. There have been numerous reports of passengers picking taxis at night and waking up the following morning not knowing where they were or how they got there. Some are not that lucky, they lose their lives and don’t get a second chance to be careful. Security in the country is poor; poor security coupled with poor address system makes it difficult to even direct the police in case of an emergency. This means that if you as a citizen do not take measures to keep yourself safe, you are at the mercy of evildoers. Before an Uber driver has an activated account with Uber, their credit card details, license etc. details are taken. This means that the chances that an Uber driver would want to harm anyone is nonexistent. Uber uses GPS to find clients for drivers. It has records of paths the driver uses every day, that even makes it easy for Uber to find where the driver lives in case of an emergency. This makes Uber waaaaaaaayyy safer than a taxi. Now if you are stranded somewhere far from home and you have the option to pay 20 cedis to a taxi driver you have no records on to take you home and the other option to pay 30 cedis to an Uber driver whose contacts, picture, etc are with Uber, which would you choose?
Placing surges at night will encourage Uber drivers to stay late to help passengers get home. Without surges, there is little motivation for Uber drivers to roam at night. Uber tries to calculate time into the fare so when a trip takes longer than expected, they add a little fee to it. My trip from Haatso to Tawala that cost 25 cedis will now probably cost 10 cedis because at night there will be no traffic. Now who would want to drive someone for that distance for 10 cedis which he or she would eventually have to give a quarter of it to Uber anyway.
Navigation
I will not lay the blame of this only on the doorstep of Uber. Our networks should take most of the blame. After all these years of being with us, our telcos have still not had enough respect for us to give us proper internet. You can be at North Legon and your network signal just goes off. North Legon! Not Atwedie on Accra- Kumasi road. Haba!! Common navigation with our internet in Ghana is a problem? I have been in a situation where I got a client to her destination, clicked on the Uber app for the fare to be calculated, and we sat there for minutes… waiting. I had to turn my data on and off several times before calculation was done. A client might even feel that the fare rose because the time taken to get internet access could have been seen by the app as travel time. Will they be wrong to feel that way? Some drivers I know have experienced worse. They could not get the app to calculate so the passenger had to leave. Ofcourse Uber paid later but that is not the best of situations.
One time I took a trip from East Legon to Airport; at the airport I got a request that showed that the passenger was around the airport traffic light. As I drove, the passenger called back and asked if I was at East Legon. I said, no. After the call, the location of the client had changed from the traffic light to somewhere on the Patrice Lumunba road near Zenith Bank. I was confused. I called the client minutes later to ask for a landmark, it was then I found that the passenger was somewhere at American House in East Legon. Her map had showed that I was somewhere behind her house, meanwhile…. It can be frustrating sometimes.
Union
There are many challenges with the Uber app and its functionalization that only drivers may be privy to. This is the same in all organisations and calls for unionization or the coming together of individuals for the purposes of promoting and protecting their interests. Who represents the drivers of Uber when Uber pegs the transport fares? Who is there to ensure that in this country where fuel prices keep changing every now and then, which it did couple of weeks ago under the radar, drivers are not hard hit? There is the need for Uber drivers to come together to form a union to ensure their interests are considered. Forming a union is not an avenue for troublemaking as some believe, it is to ensure that as one body, the drivers can push for better service and ensure that Uber with all its attendant positives survives here in Ghana.
Let me take this opportunity to wish Uber a happy half-year in Ghana and hope we can work together for the growth of the transport sector.
By: Dyno
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