LAHORE: Delivery and ride-hailing riders working for Foodpanda, Yango and inDrive are preparing to protest against what they say are unfair company practices and taxes. They plan to keep working while they do it.
In a video message, Akbar Butt Aam Aadmi said the riders would hold a peaceful march towards Islamabad until their demands were met. The march, he said, would take place largely on social media, with riders protesting from their bikes and cars while they continue their deliveries, putting moral pressure on the government instead of blocking roads.
He set out three demands includes restore the bonuses the companies have withdrawn, remove the tax recently imposed on riders, and end the Rs1,500 to Rs2,000 he says riders must pay each day to stay active on the apps.
“These are poor and middle-class people,” he said, adding that many of them work on cars and motorcycles they have rented, not bought.
Shut out of the petrol relief
The protest exposes who the government’s Rs100-a-litre petrol relief leaves out. The scheme applies only to private, non-commercial vehicles. Commercial and rented motorcycles and cars are excluded.
That rules out most of Lahore’s app riders. A bike used for Foodpanda deliveries, a rented motorcycle on Yango, or a car hired out for inDrive rides all fall outside the scheme, however small the engine. The riders who spend the most on petrol, because petrol is their work, get none of the relief meant to soften the price.
With petrol above Rs390 a litre, they pay full price for every litre, on top of the commissions and fees they say the platforms deduct.
A different kind of protest
The proposed march differs from the rickshaw unions’ calls for economic justice and the street protests Lahore has seen this year. Riders who stop working lose a day’s income, so they plan to protest without stopping.
Butt thanked social media platforms for giving a voice to working-class people, who he said were ignored by television channels, and ended his message with verses from Habib Jalib’s poem “Dastoor”, the revolutionary poet’s well-known rejection of unjust rule.
Whether a protest held mostly online can pressure Islamabad, which sets the petrol relief rules, or the platforms, which set the fees, remains to be seen.
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