Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1138801
04.07.19 11 catchment of our workforce to attract talent from all walks of life with the only underlying pre-requisites being the willingness to learn and the un- questionable commitment to passen- ger safety and service delivery. Malta's roads are becoming busier and busier. Do you feel that the government's investment in road infrastructure is helping with the traffic situation? Whilst the current works may pro- vide a temporary relief, especially for congested hotspots, my experi- ence-based opinion is that this is not the optimal long-term solution in which the major investment should be made. The fact of the matter is that our roads are not able to take on the volume of vehicles being put on them and any long-term strategy should be anchored around changing culture and not merely burdening further the infrastructure to accommodate the accumulation of further congestion. And when you change the mindset of people, you can achieve great- er things. This is what we have been doing here at eCabs – promoting the reality that a change in culture and mentality is indeed possible. With the use of technology, we are making it increasingly easy and cheaper for people to be encouraged to leave their car and start using cabs more. It is not a change that will happen overnight, but it will take years. But we're man- aging because if we weren't, we would have been out of business a long time ago. If we can do it, so can the rest. What is the biggest challenge of running a large business like yours in Malta? The biggest challenge that we found when starting up eCabs was human resources. We operate in a highly human resources-intensive environ- ment and the limited pool of people willing to work in a disciplined and structured environment is somewhat challenging albeit not impossible. But even here we changed culture and we've managed to the extent that to- day, even women are applying to join us as drivers. Today in fact, one of my most cherished statistics is that 20% of our drivers are women. We do not only believe in equal opportunity but we enable it in practice. I assure you that many other challenges fill up our day-to-day operations but really and truly management is there to find solutions and not to complain about challenges. It's a mind-set that we try to ingrain across eCabs. Since eCabs was started, a number of new taxi companies have also sprouted around the island. How does eCabs keep itself ahead of the competition? We started off this industry in Mal- ta and I am personally very satisfied to see that what we started grew even outside of eCabs. Commercially our vision is second to none and we shall certainly be reinventing the industry again in the coming months. Having said that, even in the current model, I believe that our proposition is a unique one. e service we offer is fully com- pliant with regulation, based on best practice and with the most diverse of booking channels – phone, website, app and social channels – all backed by an integrated IT infrastructure that we have developed in-house and that we have built and re-built over these past 10 years. is is coupled with the huge amount of movement data we have been collating and that contributes to a constant improvement of the service at all levels, particularly for route opti- misation. Competition will strengthen us as it makes us seek better efficiency levels and more innovative service de- livery enhancements. What plans do you have for the future of the company - any project in the pipeline? Our pipeline is full of initiatives at all levels. From deploying new features on our consumer app, to the provision of new transport products up to the internationalisation of our business model. We aim to grow the Company into one of the largest corporates on this island and exposing our achieve- ments on the international stage to tap into the scale of markets beyond our shores. So watch the eCabs space: it will be an exciting journey. INTERVIEW the largest corporates in Malta' The talk of 'foreign workers' needs to stop. There is no such thing as 'foreign' workers. There are workers who decide to make Malta their home, they decide to commit to working and they work