In another piece of news reminding us all that racial prejudice is (sadly) very much alive in a supposedly diverse nation, a woman shared her harrowing experience of being rejected by a Grab driver.
Apparently, it’s because the driver prefers not to pick up those of Indian descent.
Posting on the GrabHitch Singapore Community Facebook page, Vicky Sumaran wrote about her brush with blatant racial discrimination when she arranged a ride via the carpooling service. In a screenshot of her exchange with the GrabHitch driver (mostly private car owners who aren’t driving for profit like GrabShare drivers), Vicky got her morning commute unexpectedly cancelled. When queried, the driver had the gall to simply answer that she “don pick Indian”.
The shocking incident was referred to Grab, who confronted the driver. Instead of showing regret for her bigoted turn, she claimed that it was a “typo error”. Seriously?
“A typo is when u misspell certain words. It’s not a typo when you make a derogatory comment,” wrote Vicky. “There’s a different term for that. It’s known as racism.”
Grab has since suspended the driver — but that apparently took a bit of prodding for them to do so, according to Vicky’s friend who goes by the name of Roy Llh on Facebook.
“Her Grab driver cancelled her ride close to pick up time, and dropped off a message “Donpick indian”. Instinctively, she approached Grab to feedback about this disgusting experience, only to be told by Grab that they are “not taking sides” regarding this matter. Subsequently, after further prompts, Grab decided to yield and in their words, “suspend” this driver.”
“For Grab to have such a code of conduct but not adhere to it immediately is in one word: hypocritical,” Roy added.
According to Grab, they did indeed suspend the driver temporarily from their service while investigations were carried out. The company assured that discrimination is not tolerated at all on their platform, but they needed to take an impartial stance during their inquest to hear all sides of the story before taking action.
“While we continue to investigate the case, our initial findings show that the driver has received consistently good ratings from passengers of different races,” they stated to Coconuts Singapore. “Grab is committed to making transportation accessible to all and this means that no passengers should be denied the opportunity to ride with Grab, regardless of race, religion, nationality, sex or any other characteristics protected under the law.”
EDIT: We’ve updated the article to include the statement by Grab and more details that’ve emerged.
