PETALING JAYA, June 29 — Violence against ride-sharing services like Uber and Grab by disgruntled cabbies in the city has intensified.
Brickfields police chief ACP Sharul Othman Mansor said a 35-year-old Grab driver was allegedly intimidated by a group of angry cabbies at Mid Valley Megamall during a pickup yesterday.
Sharul said the driver had travelled to the North Point lobby of the mall to pick up two passengers at about 2am before an unidentified taxi driver approached him and berated him.
“The taxi driver scolded the man for picking up passengers there before forcing the two riders to get out of the car,” he said.
Two more taxi drivers arrived shortly and tried to confiscate the victim’s mobile phone but they were unsuccessful.
He said the cabbies then questioned the victim’s intention before breaking the car’s window and kicking the right side of the car.
Subsequently, a few other taxi drivers in the vicinity joined in the commotion and started kicking the vehicle.
The driver was unhurt during the ordeal but the vehicle’s back doors, headlights, side mirror and bumper were damaged.
Sharul said there were no witnesses during the incident and CCTV recordings have been requested from the management.
There have been at least two other cases of violence against ride-sharing drivers this year.
On June 20, an Iranian woman and her child were reprimanded by a cabbie after she had hailed an Uber at KL Sentral.
The cabbie then manhandled her and her luggage as she was dragged out of the car, resulting in her suffering a minor injury.
On April 10, a driver said to be offering ride-sharing services and his foreign passengers were harassed by a group of angry cabbies in Bukit Bintang.
The driver and his passengers were hurled profanities by the cabbies after he tried to leave with the passengers.
The cabbies had also threatened to assault the driver if he tried to delete the ride-sharing app on his phone.
