The poor condition of service of Ride Hailing Drivers, otherwise known as Platform Workers has again come to the fore with a call for improvement.
Speaking at the presentation of the 2022 Ghana Fair Work Report in Accra, it was realized that ride hailing platforms are making millions out of the drivers who are virtually exploited under the arrangement.
The Country Manager for Fairwork Ghana, Dr. Joseph Budu who highlighted findings of the report noted, that the main purpose of the ratings show how platform workers are being treated and what platforms should be doing to improve working conditions of employees.
The report also called on regulators and policy makers to begin designing progressive polices that project platform workers and their welfare.
Uber, Bolt Food, Jumia Food, Swif-Wheels, Feemix, the Black Ride Yango and Indriver, The Black ride and Glovo top the list of platforms studied this year with five points.
During the research on fair pay earned by these riders, it was realized that there was insufficient evidence that workers for any of the ten platforms earned the minimum wage of 13.33 cedis a day which is inadequate, ‘‘under fair contract two platforms were able to provide evidence that the terms and conditions that the workers signed on are clear and are subject to Ghanaian laws’’, Dr Budu said. Sometimes the platforms let the workers sign a contract which are outside Ghana’s jurisdiction so two of them were able to show that in addition.
He noted that ,‘‘In addition, one platform was able to ensure that the are no unfair contract terms that prevent workers from seeking legal redress. Only one of the platforms. Under fair management that has to do with whether there is due process for the workers to seek redress, two of the platforms were able to show clear evidence that there is due process in place for decisions affecting workers’’.
The MP for Abetifi, Bryan Acheampong, hoped the launch of Fair Work’s second report on Ghana will shape policies of platform workers going forward.
‘‘This year going through the report I realised the scoring has dropped. I do not even want to believe that they have reduced their effort in putting the workers first. I wouldn’t say typical of Ghanaians but you realized that when you enter the job market at the initial stages, you provide heaven built customer service but as customers begin to patronise your Service you take advantage of customers and turn to be comfortable and reduce the quality of customer service, he said.
Mr Acheampong added ‘‘I do not want to believe that after one year we’ve gotten to that comfort zone where the quality of your service is beginning to go down. I take it as a moment where you are adjusting to your earlier successes and will as such recalibrate and launch greater customer service for our people’’
Meanwhile, Fair Work hopes to come out with a policy brief soon which will be a guiding principle in shaping the conditions of service of platform workers.
The launch of the report was sponsored by the German government, GIZ.
