Chinese transportation ministry announced on Friday a directive from Beijing prompting the office to conduct a nationwide inspection on all ride-hailing services operating in the country. This move from the Chinese government comes in light with the recent string of deaths of two passengers.
According to Reuters, the comprehensive inspections will kick off this coming September 5, Wednesday. The crackdown will cover all ride-hailing service platforms in the country, including the giant firm Didi Chuxing, a statement from the transport ministry indicated.
In response, Didi said that the company is more than willing to cooperate with the Chinese ruling body in the implementation of the policy.
Via Didi's Weibo (China's equivalent to a social media website, Twitter), the Beijing, China-stationed transport firm went on to say that it will accept, in its full terms, the "supervision" and regulatory actions of the transport agency. It will also intensify its efforts in improving its services while at the same time, "ensure the safety of the public."
As pointed out in a previous report from this site, the carpool giant recently ordered termination of two company executives and the suspension of its ride-hail Hitch service in the country following the tragic incident involving the death of a woman in eastern China.
With the details provided over at BBC, the report said that the victim, who was only identified by the surname Zhao, was raped and killed by a Didi driver.
The Wenzhou police specified that the latter, a 27-year-old Zhong picked up Zhao one early morning and has since disappeared. Friends and relatives of Zhao later identified a body found abandoned in a remote place.
According to Business Insider, Zhao's case is just but one of the many brutal incidents that happened lately. This gave way for the public to demand action from the government concerning the safety of ride-hailing passengers all throughout China.
The Chinese transport ministry has long been calling for service providers like Didi to put the focus on ensuring the safety of their consumers. Didi, on its part, admitted that the company still has a lot of areas to develop, such as establishing a more comprehensive screening process which they require for applicants to undergo before they could join the service fleet.
Didi also reiterated the importance of information sharing between the company and police authorities to expedite investigative actions on cases such as the ones mentioned above.
Globally, ride-hailing companies have been marred by complaints of sexual abuse and other misconducts committed by their drivers.
