Remember once upon a time, being PHV drivers can make quite good money one? Got car to use, and making about $5-6000 a month was not difficult at all! Dunno is people haolian or not lah, some even reported up to $8-9000 a month… Good old days! But then hor, since this ^@#*&%^@ Covid hit Singapore ah, this group of PHV drivers have been very, very cham. People work from home lah, tourists cannot come here for holiday, young people cannot go clubbing, cannot go KTV, siam dius… Their business really very badly hit.
Things hit rock-bottom when the CB (Circuit Breaker) was announced. Tiagong got some days some PHV drivers barely fetched ONE passenger. To improve their incomes and put food on the table, many PHV drivers even took on part-time jobs like waiting on tables, courier, food delivery. Got old got young to feed what…☹ Of course also got many, many of them already “throw in the towel (car key)” liao… According to this PHV driver who appeared on Mediacorp CAPITAL 958 radio station, some of his driving kakis are coping by dragging their driving hours longer and longer, some are even driving up to 16 hours?? How can?? 😭
https://www.facebook.com/capital958/videos/544429680252168
In the radio interview conducted in Chinese, National Taxi Association and National Private Hire Vehicles Association advisor Wan Ling jiejie also shared on the stresses of PHV drivers. “During the pandemic, our drivers are hard at work, driving longer hours to try to boost their incomes. I hope that platform owners can consider helping our drivers in more areas, especially when it comes to the incentive schemes,” she urged.
The increase of costs of business with the increase of petrol prices, for example, really is no joke! Wan Ling jiejie also tolong platform operators don’t treat their incentive scheme maciam playing masak-masak because it will really affect the drivers and their livelihoods! Not a game hor…
Please ah, platform owners can also be more transparent about your incentive programme, and be fairer to our PHV drivers lah. We are all in this Covid 💩 together, correct?
NTUC to provide up to $650 cash relief to eligible Union member drivers and riders
____________________________________________________________________________________________
If you’d like to contribute your story to us, drop us an email at editors@sureboh.sg and we’ll review it. We read each submission that comes to us within two weeks of receiving it.
