Various sectors in Singapore have been hit by the Covid-19 outbreak.

While industries such as tourism, retail, and F&B are obvious ones, transport services have also been affected.

For one ComfortDelGro driver, times are bad enough for him to resign, after 10 years on the job.

The driver, known as Anuar Bin Ali, made the announcement in a Facebook post on Singapore Taxi Driver on Feb. 26.

Costs are too high?

Anuar said that he did not want to demoralise others, but had chosen to resign due to two main reasons.

Firstly, the Covid-19 has affected business badly.

Secondly, he finds the "cheap" CR fare "unreasonable".

CR refers to ComfortRide, a service on the ComfortDelGro Taxi Booking App that uses dynamic pricing.

Anuar provided some examples of the fares under the CR service.

• Greenwich V, Seletar Rd to MBS = S$13
• Jurong West St 91 to Kampong Bahru = S$18

According to him, these are the prices for 8pm rides, with a 25 per cent surcharge for peak hour.

Rebates not enough for him

Anuar then advised ComfortDelGro to lower their taxi rentals if they wished to follow the "Green Camp" (Grab and Gojek).

Even with daily rebates of up to S$36.50, Anuar still feels that the costs are too high for a OMO (one-man operation) driver like himself.

On Feb. 20, ComfortDelGro announced a rebate of S$16.50 per day for each taxi, which is being implemented from Feb. 21 to Mar. 31, 2020.

This will be followed by S$10 per day for the month of April.

The rest of the rebate comes from a government subsidy.

Anuar adds that he wouldn't mind earning fares of S$7 - S$12 if he were doing private hire, as the car rental is lower than that of a taxi.

"Now we need to spend long hours to sustain the rental + fuel & our earnings. Even if we drive long hours, the demand for taxi is dying since Corvid 19 outbreaks," he wrote.

He ends his post by asking the rest of the drivers to take care of their health, because "health is your wealth".

Agreement from fellow drivers

A number of drivers in the comments agreed that the vehicle rent was too high.

One commenter also shared a similar struggle faced by private hire drivers, though:

Mothership has reached out to ComfortDelGro for comment and will update this article when they reply.

Top image via ComfortDelGro's Facebook page