CEBU CITY Hall will have a trial run in the use of Grab and Uber for official government trips starting next week.
Six vehicles from Uber would be used by the City Health Department while Grab would be tested by the City Treasurer’s Office with the aim of tracing the use of these service vehicles and to determine the optimal use of the vehicles, the efficiency of the driver and the fuel consumption.
“Basically we want to determine if it is efficient to use or outsource service, transportation requirements than using our own vehicles,” said Arnel Tancinco, executive secretary of Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña.
According to Tancinco the trial would include the calculations of cost and efficiency per trip and compare it to the existing owned government vehicles.
He said that the City Health Department is chosen for the trial because of the multiple vehicles assigned to their department with diversified distributions of trips a day which includes the trip to mountain barangays, but mountain barangay trips, however, are not included in the trial.
Employees that will be given a vehicle for official trips will be the ones who can avail the trial which is also for free.
Both platforms of Grab and Uber will be used fully which means that the City Treasurer’s Office will need to book the vehicle when there are official trips.
“We wanted to see what the peculiarity is present during the trips,” said Tancinco in Cebuano.
He said the council allowed a three-month long trial, but he said that substantial results could be seen after two weeks. /Silliman University Intern Alven Marie A. Timtim