Nadaleen Singh

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan and his le­gal team are re­port­ed­ly look­ing in­to the le­gal­i­ty of Uber, the world­wide on­line trans­porta­tion net­work which of­fi­cial­ly launched in T&T at 11 am yes­ter­day.

Last night, a re­lease is­sued by the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port stat­ed that while the ser­vice is known in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, lo­cal au­thor­i­ties have ex­pressed con­cerns over the le­gal­i­ty of its op­er­a­tions with­in our ju­ris­dic­tion.

A ma­jor con­cern the Min­istry ex­pressed was whether pri­vate­ly owned ve­hi­cles would be used for hire.

The re­lease stat­ed that the Min­istry will seek le­gal ad­vice to de­ter­mine if the ser­vice can con­tin­ue to op­er­ate with­in T&T's leg­isla­tive frame­work.

The ser­vice, head­quar­tered in the Unit­ed States, al­lows users to get trans­porta­tion us­ing an app.

So­ca su­per­star Machel Mon­tano was the first the use the ser­vice in T&T. Start­ing with a base fare of $20, the rates for the Uber ser­vice are $1.20 a minute, a per kilo­me­tre fee of $1.40 and a book­ing fee of $2.50.

The ser­vice was test­ed yes­ter­day by CNC3 re­porter Akash Sama­roo, who used the ser­vice to trav­el from Port-of-Spain to Gon­za­les and back.

He said af­ter he made his re­quest for trans­porta­tion via the app, he was in­formed of the near­by dri­vers and af­ter choos­ing was sent a pho­to of the dri­ver, along with his first name and the mod­el and li­cense plate num­ber of the ve­hi­cle. Sama­roo said the trip cost him $24.

Users must be lo­cat­ed in ei­ther Port-of-Spain or San Fer­nan­do to use the ser­vice.

To sign up with Uber, dri­vers must pro­vide a cer­tifi­cate of good char­ac­ter and un­der­go a psy­cho­me­t­ric test.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion on the Uber web­site, the ser­vice is cov­ered by third-par­ty and pas­sen­ger li­a­bil­i­ty, with pas­sen­ger ac­ci­dent cov­er­age for med­ical ex­pens­es, ac­ci­den­tal death and dis­abil­i­ty.

"This cov­er­age com­mences from the mo­ment a pas­sen­ger en­ters the ve­hi­cle un­til the last pas­sen­ger ex­its the ve­hi­cle," the com­pa­ny said.