More than 100 tuk-tuk drivers who work through Grab’s app gathered at Grab’s Phnom Penh headquarters on 3 September, the Khmer-language outlet CamboJA reported that evening. They asked the company to cancel a fifteen per cent discount programme called Save Luy.
The drivers say what they receive on each kilometre after the first has dropped from 1,100 riel to 950 riel. That figure is their own account of their own receipts. It covers only the kilometres after the first.
Chhay Liprosphov, who spoke for them, said Grab had agreed to pay 1,100 riel on those kilometres only recently. He said the price under Save Luy is fifteen per cent below what it was before. A passenger who books through the programme, he said, leaves the driver 950 riel for a kilometre.
His two figures do not describe one operation. Fifteen per cent off 1,100 riel is 935 riel, not 950. A fall from 1,100 riel to 950 riel is a cut of 13.64 per cent, not fifteen.
Grab’s public affairs manager, Kan Chhunnat, said Save Luy exists only to increase work for tuk-tuk drivers. Company data show they carry passengers for about two hours in an eight-hour working day, he said. Grab has not published those data. He gave no figure for how many drivers they cover, or over what period.
He said the service is off between 5pm and 7pm. He put the fall in rides down to fewer tourists, the crackdown on online scams, and local passengers using their own transport.
Both accounts sit on one published contract. Grab last updated its terms of service for Cambodia, which every driver accepts to use the app, on 29 May. Clause 6.1.1 sets what the company keeps. The service fee, it says, “shall be a percentage of the User Charges, as determined by Grab from time to time”, subject to any limit the law sets.
Clause 6.1.3 lets Grab “make promotional offers with different features and different rates” to passengers, and says those offers “shall accordingly be honored by you”. You is the driver. The same clause then lets Grab change the service fee at any time, at its sole discretion.
Clause 6.1.2 lets Grab collect what the passenger pays and pass on what is due to the driver. Read with 6.1.1, the driver’s money and Grab’s fee come out of the same charge, and both move when it moves. The percentage behind Grab’s fee is Grab’s to change.
The contract does not name Save Luy anywhere. The clauses are general. They do not establish what Save Luy is or how it works.
Chhay Liprosphov also said Grab’s commission has gone from 10 to 15 per cent since 2017, and the driver rate from 1,200 riel to 1,000. Those are not the figures he gives for now, and they come from the same man on the same day.
He said drivers can switch Save Luy on or off, and that when they leave it off the app’s ride alerts do not sound. He reads that as pressure. The published terms say nothing about how Grab hands out bookings among drivers. They are also not the whole contract. Clause 29 says that where a driver has signed a separate written agreement with Grab, these terms apply on top of it.
Kan Chhunnat also described a meeting held that day. He said it brought together driver representatives, the company and authorities he did not name. He said it agreed to send the case to ministries, to study it and decide whether Save Luy continues. Among them he named the Ministry of Labour and Vocational Training and the Ministry of Commerce, which handles trade and business rules.
The only account of that meeting is his. The report does not say who called it, which authorities sat in it, or where the list of ministries ends.
Von Pov, who heads the Independent Democratic Association of Informal Economy, called on the labour ministry to bring the two sides together.
Drivers gathered outside Grab’s office at the end of April as well, in what CamboJA then reported as their second protest, over fares and commission.
Both sides are asserting an outcome for the same drivers, and neither account carries a per-trip figure.
Clause 3.2.10 of the same contract forbids the driver from “giving out coupons and suggesting any other form of discounts to the Users”. One document lets Grab set a discount the driver must honour, and stops the driver setting one of his own.