CAPE TOWN: Cape Town traffic police have seized 33 Uber Technologies Inc. ride-sharing vehicles over the weekend for not having proper permits to operate in South Africa’s Western Cape Province.
“We’ve had a long series of complaints about them,” City of Cape Town spokesman Jean-Pierre Smith said here the other day. “They’re public transport vehicles and they are required to have public transport operating permits.”
Drivers of the impounded cars face fines of $128, Richard Bosman, the city’s manager for safety and security told the Customs Today. Police started seizing the cars for not having valid permits on Jan. 3.
Uber has been in talks with the City of Cape Town for months over what category of license or permit is appropriate for the service, according to Alon Lits, a general manager for Uber in Johannesburg.
“We remain committed to engaging with the city in resolving this issue,” Lits said here the other day. “We have been in discussions at a national level about introducing a new sub- category of operating license which would cater for Uber’s technology.”
These are the first Uber cars to be impounded, compared with more than 4,000 taxis detained in the past 16 months, according to Smith.
Regulators in Johannesburg, the country’s largest city, put Uber into a chartered-services operating license category, which is different from Cape Town and has fewer requirements than metered taxis, according to Lits.
