The motorcycle taxi driver (known in Indonesia as ojek) profession has changed a lot in the last few years. What was once an informal sector job has become digitized and largely taken over by ride-hailing giants Go-Jek and Grab who employ the vast majority of ojek (who are then referred to as ojol, short for ojek online).
But a few traditional motorcycle taxi drivers are still going it alone and once in a while, old school and new school ojeks clash, as happened in this viral video.
According to the original uploader’s caption, this video was taken at Manggarai Station in Tebet, South Jakarta yesterday at around 1pm.
In the video, a person who appears to work for Go-Jek based on his uniform, can be seen being attacked by multiple men, assumed to be traditional ojeks (referred to as opang, short for ojek pangkalan, in reference to their traditional bases of operation), while others seem to be trying to break up the fight.
Tebet police chief Eko Mulyadi confirmed the dispute was one between ojeks old and new, saying that the source of conflict was the ojol picking up a passenger in a space that had unofficially been designated as exclusively for opang.
“The information we got on the ground is that there was a misunderstanding. (The ojol) tried to take passengers in the opang area,” Eko said when asked for confirmation by Detik today.
However, Eko said that nobody filed a police report over the incident.
Ojol and car drivers working for ride-hailing services have often come into conflict with opang and regular taxi drivers who feel that the newcomers are impinging on their territory and stealing their customers. A larger clash involving hundreds of ojol and opang took place in Bandung in July. In Bali, traditional taxi drivers have fiercely opposed the expansion of ride-hailing services and app-based drivers avoid many parts of the island to avoid potentially violent repercussions.
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