Good day everyone, 

I hope this message finds you well. Hereafter follows Bolt South Africa's response by Mr. Gareth Taylor. Please do stay tuned as I will be issuing my response relating to this statement.

Thank you very much for your support. Rest assured, change will come.

Yours,

Atang Swartbooi

Bolt Services ZA (Pty) Ltd
M5 Office Park
Unit 7, Block B
Eastman Road, Maitland
Cape Town
7405
Reg. number: 2016/095400/07
18 March 2022

Dear Mr Swartbooi

At Bolt, we share your deep and sincere concern for the safety and wellbeing of women
passengers in the Bolt eco-system, and want to thank you for raising public awareness and
support for initiatives to more-effectively combat the scourge of gender-based violence.

While we could provide you with many pages of evidence to demonstrate how Bolt tries to
effectively live out our zero-tolerance for any form of verbal or physical abuse of our
passengers, and the industry-leading safeguarding measures we have in place to actively live out our duty of care every day and in every way, the fact of the matter is that Bolt
simply has to do more. And we will.

Thank you for actively reminding us of this responsibility, your offer to help be part of the
solution, and the safeguarding suggestions you have made to try and ensure a safe and
secure passenger experience.

We have a high-level task team working tirelessly at the moment to review a range of
potential enhancements – from fast-tracking our facial recognition technology (that is
currently being tested in Nigeria, and was tested in South Africa last year) to GBV 2
preventative training for drivers on our platform. This is in addition to our already
comprehensive, existing safeguarding measures, that include:

● A vetting process that includes police clearance checks on all drivers as well as
enhanced and separate checks by Managed Integrity Evaluation (MIE);
● ‘Share my ETA’ function that lets passengers share their trip details and progress with
any trusted individual – meaning that any delay in their arrival is flagged immediately;
● Passengers have the ability to track the driver’s progress towards their pick-up point.
Upon the arrival of the driver, passengers are able to ask the driver a variety of
questions – that only the driver that was specified in the Bolt app would know the
answers to – before they enter the car, providing an additional layer of safety for
every trip; and
● An SOS button that passengers have in their app, that alerts Namola to send a private
emergency response if there is an incident (support that includes private medical
and armed response as well as a call centre operational on a 24/7 basis).

Furthermore, and to reiterate what we shared with you earlier about safety measures that
are being deployed to combat profile renting and also improve the general safety on our
platform:

● We are piloting driver selfie verification. This is a biometric identity verification feature
to help ensure that the driver whose profile is in the app is the one behind the wheel.
The goal is to reduce driver impersonations/ renting of profiles and criminal activity
on the platform.
● Driver Behavioural Quality Score (BQS) - we have improved our rating system to
incorporate better and more comprehensive feedback to drivers. When the driver’s
score continues to drop past a threshold, the driver will need to complete a coaching
course focused on improving customer service. Coaching is enforced with blocking
drivers from the platform until it is completed. The end goal is to provide a better and
more consistent service to passengers.

● Trust and safety product team - we have a new product team incorporated within
Bolt which is dedicated to improving safety on the platform through app
enhancements or strategic partnerships.
● Our Head of Public Policy is working with local authorities (SAPS) from station level to
provincial level to educate officers about the e-hailing industry, and to collaborate in
finding ways to improve safety in the industry. We are also working from the
ministerial level down to address issues with regulation, and to lobby for more
support when investigating crimes.

Regarding the current case, we can assure you that the driver in question followed the
standard Bolt onboarding process of verifying criminal records that confirmed he had no
criminal record (including our own internal criminal record check), conducting a vehicle
inspection, confirming the validity of his driver documents, and our continuous reviewing of
ratings.

Bolt prohibits drivers from authorising any other person to use their Bolt Driver Account in
any way whatsoever. Any driver found to be fraudulently “renting” their profile to any other
party or allowing any unauthorised person to use their profile for any reason, will be
removed from the platform permanently. We report all such instances to SAPS, and we are
discussing these fraudulent groups and practices with social media platforms in order to
ensure urgent action.

We have also learned some important communication lessons in recent weeks, and we
believe it best to talk about enhanced safety and security measures once these are in place
and working to protect our passengers – rather than falling into the trap you identify of
PR-talk about ambitions and what we plan to do. Our focus will be to develop a sustained
and “always-on” approach to safety to confront the scourge of GBV.

As an important stakeholder, we promise to inform you Mr Swartbooi – directly and
personally – of these enhanced safety measures, once they are in place. We continue to engage with activists such as yourself as well as established, reputable NGOs working in the
gender-based violence and safeguarding space, to address the concerns you have raised so
powerfully in your online petition.

I want to assure you that there is a huge sense of urgency from our side to move with speed
on new and additional safeguarding measures, despite the headwinds we face in a country
plagued by the scourge of gender-based violence.

While less than three in 10,000 Bolt rides result in passenger safety reports, one safety
incident is one too many. It sickens me that actions of a handful of individuals out of the
40,000 registered Bolt drivers have violated our comprehensive vetting and verification
process – and violated the emotional and physical wellbeing of the women who rely on Bolt for a safe commute to their homes, work, places of worship, and places of leisure.

Thank you once again for engaging with us on such important issues. South Africa needs
more men with your passion and integrity. Please be assured of Bolt’s shared commitment
to the very highest standards of passenger safeguarding.

Regards,
Mr. Gareth Roland Taylor
Regional Manager: SADC