The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The Truth Yango (TTY), Mr Mohammed Ayaba has appealed to the government to prioritise the welfare of online transport businesses in the country.

He said with the high rate of digitisation in the country if the right policies were not made and implemented with regards to digitisation, many businesses would collapse.

Speaking in an interview recently, he indicated that if indeed the government really wanted to promote digitisation and create an enabling environment for businesses to thrive, the online transport sector must not be ignored.

Mr Ayaba who is also the Yango Ambassador for Ghana, bemoaned that despite the fact that online ride-hailing services were gaining prominence in the country, nothing was mentioned about it in the recently announced budget.

He said it was very important for the government to support persons engaged in such businesses with loans as they also contributed massively to the reduction in the high rate of unemployment among the youth in the country.

TTY, for example, he said had about 12,000 drivers on its platforms who were currently doing well due to the high number of people who preferred using such applications (app) than the regular taxis.

He, therefore, called on persons interested in driving as a business to patronize TTY as his outfit had cars to give out on hire purchase bases with no interest.

"We even give out smartphones to people who express interest in doing business with us but don't have phones that support this app.

This is our own little way of contributing to reducing unemployment and alleviating poverty. As the Yango ambassador for Ghana, I do not always look out for profit only, I also ensure I do my best in the interest of my drivers so that together we can improve the online transport business sector and make Ghana a better place," he added.

Touching on some of the importance of patronising TTY, he revealed that because of how the drivers had been trained and details of vehicles registered on the app, customers would not have to worry about their safety and that of their valuables, as any item dropped and mistakenly left in any of TTY vehicles were safe and traceable.

Apart from the security of items of TTY customers, drivers, he said, periodically get trained by his outfit on road safety measures, courtesy and fire safety among others, and expressed gratitude to the health practitioners, the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) and the Police Motto Traffic Transport Department for always making themselves available when the need arises for the training sessions for TTY drivers.

According to Mr Ayaba, one of the major challenges his outfit faced was educating some of the drivers on how to use the app because some people were not technologically inclined to manage apps properly.

He also held that there were special welfare packages for all drivers registered under TTY to make their retirement better, saying the contribution was made through the reduction of 3 per cent of what every TTY driver made from each ride.

This amount, he explained was deducted and saved until drivers were ready to retire.

Under the Smart Drivers Association initiative by his outfit, the Yango Ghana Ambassador revealed that more than 100 acres of land had been acquired at Adeiso, in the Eastern region, to give out to interested persons who would make payment of as low as GHC5.00 cedis every day just for a year to acquire a full plot of land in that jurisdiction.

"These are some of the things we are doing to improve the lives of our members now and in the future even with no support from the government so I am appealing to the government to look in the direction of the online business and bring us some relief when it comes to loan acquisition and other forms of support so that we can do more," he said.