CLDF postpones vote on bill to legalize Uber.

The Legislative Chamber of the Federal District postponed until this Wednesday (22) the vote that decides the future of the Uber app in the DF. After more than six hours of debates on the text sent by the Executive, the district deputies were unable to reach an agreement. The proposal on the app has been under consideration in the Chamber since November.

Among the items without consensus are the limitation on the number of licenses and the method of paying taxes to the government of the Federal District. The most controversial article of the bill is the prohibition of Uber X, a modality that provides for regular cars for passenger transport, and, if approved, would keep only cars considered luxury vehicles on the market.

Two texts

The bill's rapporteur, Representative Professor Israel (PV), says that two substitute texts have been proposed. According to him, parliamentarians will meet again with technicians this Wednesday morning to refine the final text, and the bill will return to the plenary for a vote tomorrow afternoon.

"We don't want to limit the number of licenses if we're not going to transform the app-based service into a taxi service. Something that has progressed in the discussion is the issue of allowing a charge per kilometer driven by the apps, and we will probably leave that to the Executive branch to decide. Now, we don't want this fee to be too high so as not to affect the price of the service," he said.

Representative Chico Vigilante (PT) argues that the text should return to the Executive branch. “How can we set a rate if we don't know on what basis we're going to do it? The responsibility lies with them [the government], otherwise any profound modification made here in the chamber could lead to the Public Prosecutor's Office filing a lawsuit questioning its constitutionality, because the substitute bill has a lot of detail, including creating a new type of transportation, and a representative legally cannot do that.”

Conflict

And the lack of consensus isn't limited to the Chamber. Outside the building, taxi drivers and Uber drivers clashed on Tuesday. One taxi driver was caught throwing fireworks at a group of Uber drivers. Another man was detained by military police for carrying a firework. It was necessary to form a cordon of police officers separating the two groups.

Taxi driver Francisco Lima is against the project. “We taxi drivers are all legal, we comply with all the criteria required by the regulatory bodies, and to be a taxi driver, to work with individual passenger transport, requires numerous requirements, and we meet all of them, and they don't.”

Alberto Aguiar, an Uber driver since 2015, is in favor of the proposal. “Uber is currently approved by 98% of the population of the Federal District. It's a quality service, with an affordable price that people can afford and are enjoying, and many people, with the current state crisis, are even using Uber to bring money home.”