The Association of Free Consumers of Panama (ACL) reiterates how incongruous and dangerous it represents for all consumers in the country, that the Communication and Transportation Commission of the National Assembly wants the concessionaires to take over the digital platforms.
“Bill 986, which establishes the regulatory framework for the use of information and communication technology platforms, in the luxury taxi service, does not seek to protect the rights of users, nor platform drivers, nor from the taxi drivers themselves. The only thing it does is favor the so-called transportation concessionaires,” said Raúl Molina, president of the ACL.
Molina stressed that, with this project that is being discussed without the participation of users, the National Assembly wants the country to go back 30 years and that digital platforms stop being a private service to turn it into a bad public service that had kidnapped the users. users until the arrival of digital platforms, which already operate in thousands of markets, as a private and legal option to which all users have the right.
The president of ACL emphasized that we are opposed to the political clientelism of the quotas where only the owners of the concessionaires win. “The more than 85,000 seats that they control nationwide are not enough and now they intend to do business by forcing the drivers of digital platforms to buy a seat and join a corrupt and obsolete system,” Molina questioned.
Efficient and safer service will disappear
Molina warned that, today, the concessionaires do not require change or renewal of vehicles, but through this project they intend to require it from those who provide the platform service, which is an obvious and malicious entry barrier for the provision of the service platforms, which would cause all users to lose an efficient and safer service.
«As always, users are alone in this battle, the Assembly is sitting behind our backs, without taking into account our opinion, nor that of the Executive itself, which through the Transit and Transportation Authority requested that this project be sent to a Technical Subcommittee to analyze this issue”, lamented the defender of consumer rights.
Molina insisted that this law only has one beneficiary: the concessionaires who are the same ones who profit and have kidnapped the taxi service that has not been modernized and that now they want to do with the digital platforms: interfere to corrupt the system, fill the pockets, regardless of the user.
“Users have the right to freely choose the medium with which we prefer to move, we have already won the battle in the Supreme Court of Justice to vindicate this right and we are not going to lose it in the face of a bill that has neither tail nor head , which only confirms that the deputies are not here to legislate for the benefit of the users, but for the benefit of the dark interests of the owners of concessionaire piqueras,” Molina pointed out.
