Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has announced that commercial taxi drivers operating in Accra are being migrated onto a ride-hailing app.
He disclosed this while speaking at the General Council Meeting of the Church of Pentecost Ghana on Wednesday, May 3.
According to him, this forms part of efforts to digitalise the operations of commercial drivers in the country.
Dr Bawumia explained that this scheme was initiated after several complaints from taxi drivers that their businesses were threatened by the numerous ride-hailing companies.
“We sat down with my team and said, okay, how do we help our taxi drivers compete with the Uber drivers so that they can also be like Uber? So, we set the team to work. And so the task was to digitise the operations of our regular taxis, just as you have with Uber.
“I’m happy to say that that work has now been completed. And in the next couple of months, we will be able to place our taxis at least in Greater Accra to start with, all on an Uber-like platform. And you’ll be able to call them just like you call Ubers to your homes and all of that,” the Vice President announced.
He added that work is ongoing to digitalise public and private transport sectors by the end of the year.
“There’s more actually coming. We are attacking everybody. Trotros will come later on, VIP buses, Ayalolo, Metro Mass. The whole public sector is going to go and private sector transport is going to go on what we call a tap-and-go system.
“When you go to England, they have the Oyster card that you travel with. Ghana is also going to have an Oyster card before the end of this year,” he added.