Gauteng MEC for Finance and Economic Development, Lebogang Maile has lauded the financial commitment of Bolt to enhance tech safety on its platform for both riders and drivers.
Maile made these remarks at an event where ride-hailing platform Bolt announced a €100 million (R1.87 billion) commitment to upgrade safety on the platform over three years.
The announcement by Bolt was made during a global safety campaign launch in Johannesburg.
According to Bolt, this investment will support the Bolt Safety Team in its work of product development, customer support, safety feature awareness, and preventative measures to minimise safety incidents.
Bolt has a Safety Team of more than 500 specialists who are working to achieve the safety goals of the company.
The team is made up of Safety Specialists who provide 24/7 customer support from Bolt's Safety Hubs as well as Safety Experts based in Tallinn, Estonia, who focus on product development, engineering, and operations.
Maile said: “The month of November marks the beginning of the Global 16 Days Campaign, also known as the 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children.
“It is for this reason that Bolt's Global Safety Campaign, and other initiatives by the company which aim to raise awareness of safety features, safety initiatives, and scaling preventative measures to prevent incidents of harassment and violence, are especially welcome in a South Africa that is battling the scourge of gender-based violence and femicide.”
The MEC also highlighted that the unique economic and demographic profiles of Gauteng, which have a direct link to crime levels higher than the national average, make safety interventions crucial.
“For this reason, the Gauteng Provincial Government is especially grateful that Bolt South Africa has made safety a key priority. For us, safety in the e-hailing industry is both a social and an economic imperative,” Maile said.
To address the role of mutual trust between driver partners and riders, Bolt will be introducing new trip verification features to join the platform's suite of safety tools in the coming months.
These features will include trip count and unique four-digit trip pickup codes to help match riders and driver partners, plus Bolt will be continuing to scale its Rider Verification solution.
Bolt will also be upgrading existing features like Ride Check to proactively detect if a trip's route unexpectedly changes or takes longer than expected.
Another feature called Trusted Contacts will ensure Ride Check notifications are escalated to a friend or loved one if needed.
Record Audio will support the Safety Team's safety investigations and has been used to trigger in-app audio recordings to submit with Customer Support tickets.
Simo Kalajdzic, Senior Operations Manager at Bolt, said: "We take our responsibility to ensure the safety of our platform seriously.
“With the €100 million committed over three years to safety, we recognise that this requires an end-to-end approach across our business in South Africa.“
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