China's Didi Suspends Hitch Ride-Sharing App After Passenger Raped And Killed By Driver

    

    

China’s largest ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing is suspending its Hitch services nationwide, the company said in a statement on Sunday, a day after police said a ride-sharing passenger in the eastern Chinese city of Wenzhou was raped and killed by a driver.

Didi Chuxing said it was sorry that the carpool service would be suspended from Aug. 27 due to “disappointing mistakes” while the company reevaluates the product’s business model.

The suspected murder of a 20-year-old woman, who Wenzhou police identified only with the surname Zhao, is the latest in a series of violent crimes that have fueled safety concerns about the service.

Zhao got into a Hitch carpool vehicle at 1 p.m. (0500 GMT) on Friday, and sent a message to a friend at around 2 p.m. seeking help before losing contact, according to a local police statement.

A 27-year-old driver named Zhong was detained at about 4 a.m. on Saturday and confessed to raping and killing the passenger, the local police statement said, adding that the victim’s body had been recovered and an investigation was continuing.

Did said on Sunday that the suspect had no prior criminal record, had provided authentic documentation and passed a facial recognition test before starting work.

But the company said on Saturday there was a prior complaint made against the driver on Thursday by a passenger who alleged the driver took them to a remote place and then followed the passenger after she got out of the car.

“The incident shows the many deficiencies with our customer service processes, especially the failure to act swiftly on the previous passenger’s complaint and the cumbersome and rigid process of information sharing with the police,” the company said in the statement on Sunday.

The Hitch carpool service has run over 1 billion trips in the past three years, the company said. Didi is the biggest ride-sharing firm globally by number of trips.

STATE MEDIA CRITICISM

China’s state-backed media criticized Didi’s safety record on Sunday, while celebrities took to social media and pledged to delete the application.

“You’ve had so many incidents,” an unnamed family member of Zhao was quoted as saying in the Qianjiang Evening news, an official Zhejiang province publication.

“What are you going to do about your safety and service problems?”

Wang Chuanjun, a famous Chinese actor, on Sunday shared a screenshot of his phone as he prepared to delete the application. His post was shared over 58 thousand times on China’s Twitter-like Weibo and the hashtag “Wang Chuanjun uninstalls Didi” had been viewed nearly 9 million times by the evening.

China’s official Xinhua News agency criticized Didi for not doing more to prevent such incidents and said the company should face legal punishment if it failed to put customer’s safety first.

Didi has increased its safety measures for Hitch after the murder of a flight attendant during a Hitch ride in May sparked outrage. These included limiting Hitch drivers to only picking up passengers of the same sex during early morning and late evening hours.

Source : Reuters 

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TfL under fire for signing 'amazing' number of non-disclosure agreements with departing staff

Transport for London (TfL) has been criticised for signing more than 800 "gagging" agreements with departing members of staff in one year.

TfL signed 848 non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) – a legal contract that binds former employers to confidentiality restrictions – during the course of 2016 to 2017, the latest year for which data is available. That year, 2,100 members of staff left TfL, meaning NDA's were levied on 40 per cent of the employees that left.

London Assembly member Caroline Pidegon, who asked Khan about the NDAs, said she was "amazed" at the numbers.

“While non-disclosure agreements and confidentiality clauses can have a role in protecting commercially sensitive information, I am amazed that TfL considers such agreements to be necessary for over 40 per cent of their departing staff," she said.

“TfL needs to justify this high level of agreements and reassure the travelling public that they are not gagging former staff who should have every right to comment on an organisation they once worked for.”

A TfL spokesperson said: “We are delivering huge savings in our operating costs while delivering safe, reliable and affordable transport services and one of the biggest programmes of capital investment anywhere in the world.

"Part of this involves merging functions and reducing management layers enabling net savings of over £500m over the course of our five-year business plan and recurring savings every year thereafter. This proactive management of cost is helping us turn an operating deficit into a surplus over this period.”

In May the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, launched a review into senior staff severance pay after TfL admitted spending £50m on departing staff over the past year.

Anyone earning over £100,000 now has to have their pay packet signed off by Khan.

The transport body has been tasked with shedding management layers and cutting its reliance on agency workers as part of a cost-cutting drive.

Among the big earners at TfL are commissioner Mike Brown, whose total remuneration for the year was £374,959, and Crossrail boss Andrew Wolstenholme, who collected £736,157.

Last month Khan sparked criticised after he refused to sit on TfL's remuneration committee to have oversight of the generous payouts, arguing that the launching of the review made it unnecessary.

Previous mayors Ken Livingstone and Johnson both sat on the committee – Livingstone as chair throughout his time on the board and Johnson as a member during his time as mayor.

Source : CityAM

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