Civil servants to use taxi instead of administrative vehicles

ASTANA. KAZINFORM - At the start of 2018, Astana Mayor Asset Issekeshev outlined an interesting trend for the Kazakh public sector. In particular, he said he intends to make all officials use taxicabs for transportation instead of administrative vehicles before the end of 2018. According to him, such measures will save considerable budget resources.

Similar practices are successfully applied in neighboring Russia. In fact, it was the business sector that decided to switch over to corporate taxis. According to reports, over the past couple of years, thousands of companies have opted out of their own fleet of vehicles, replacing it with corporate taxi services. These are large retailers, consulting and insurance companies, banks, networks of cinemas and fitness clubs, fast food restaurants, to name but a few.

For instance, Yandex.Taxi company says that it will be cheaper to use their services than to allocate administrative cars to employees, and more effective in many respects. For each employee, it is possible to set a monthly amount limit and allow certain tariffs. In addition, companies receive statistics on the accomplished trips and information on the routes. Therefore, transportation costs become transparent. What is more, owing to a large number of vehicles operating and the technological distribution of orders, one can take a taxi as quickly as he/she would go by own car, and there is no need to look for a parking place.

It is noteworthy that Damu Entrepreneurship Development Fund JSC (Damu Fund) became the first user of "Yandex.Taxi for Business" service in Kazakhstan. The Fund's representative says that after the first trips of employees, it is apparent that Yandex.Taxi's services would be a good tool to monitor and optimize cash flows. Thus, now the money that Damu Fund would spend for the maintenance of the car fleet will now be used to expand the activities of its subdivisions.

Photo by Evgeny Sinelnikov