ofo risks losing licence next month for breaching requirements
Bike-sharing service ofo risks having its licence suspended next month.
In a statement yesterday, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said ofo has breached multiple regulatory requirements.
These included having too many deployed bikes, despite ofo's stipulated maximum fleet size of 10,000.
The Chinese company has also not managed to implement the QR-code parking system, which they were supposed to do by Monday .
"We view these as serious breaches of critical requirements," said LTA. "Therefore ofo must meet all regulatory requirements by Feb 13, failing which LTA intends to suspend ofo's licence."
Licence applications for bike-sharing services started in May last year.
About five months later, in October, LTA granted full licences to Mobike, ofo and SG Bike, and also awarded sandbox licences to Anywheel, Grabcycle and Qiqi ZhiXiang.
The six were the first batch of bike-sharing licensees here.
LTA had originally granted ofo a maximum fleet size of 25,000 bikes, but the company had requested to have this cut down to just 10,000, citing a business decision.
This was despite ofo initially having applied to have a maximum fleet of 80,000 bikes.
The request for the cut was then agreed to by LTA.
LTA added that it has been working with the licensees to help them comply with requirements since the first batch of licences were awarded.
About a month after the licences were awarded, LTA said it would take action against ofo for breaching the fleet-size quota.
The company could have been fined up to $100,000 for its infringement of the Parking Place Act.
Last month, The Straits Times reported that ofo users' refund requests had gone unanswered, and that staff from ofo had not been seen for many weeks at their registered address.
LTA said yesterday that they have given ofo multiple warnings and taken regulatory action against the company.
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