Ah, remember when bike-sharing used to be such a hot button issue here? Another firm bites the dust, and the Land Transport Authority (LTA) doesn’t want the rusty chassis of yellow Ofo two-wheelers here anymore. Unless the company can save itself.
The authorities suspended the operating license of the Chinese bike-sharing firm yesterday after Ofo failed to comply with regulatory requirements by Wednesday. The license had been granted to the company to officially operate a fleet of shared bikes across the country last year, but LTA found that Ofo had breached multiple critical requirements as the months went by. Ofo’s 25,000 bikes were found to be way over the granted maximum fleet size of 10,000, and on top of that, the company failed to properly implement the QR-code parking system LTA required.
On Jan 15, an ultimatum was issued: Comply with LTA’s requirements by Feb 13, or get its license suspended. Clearly, Ofo missed the deadline.
Now, the firm will have to remove all its bicycles from public places within a month. If the bikes are still scattered around by March 13, LTA will cancel Ofo’s license.
It looks like it might, considering the firm’s current predicament. Reuters reported last year that Ofo is considering bankruptcy after getting into some “immense” cash flow problems. According to Channel NewAsia, the contracts of hundreds of Ofo Singapore employees were terminated in November, and former employees had been instructed to stop responding to customer queries.
