Amadou Kasimo asks for electric assist, training, and visible pricing

Thank you.

Go ahead, sir.

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning, Your Honor.

Thanks, City Council, for giving us a chance to speak.

My name is Amadou Kasimo, and I've been a pedicab driver since 2006.

I'm a father of three teenagers, all born here, and that was my only job.

I've been working hard daily to maintain my family.

We used to do that like 10 years ago with that pedal assist, which is really, really tough job to do.

Carrying three people on a bike, make the back like back pain.

We're all exhausted.

And today, with the age up to 50, and that's actually my only job.

I don't see myself pedaling a bike, no assistance.

The body is tired and we really need the job.

So I really strongly believe that if you guys decide to help us to legalize it, it will definitely keep us in our job to keep taking care of our family.

That's the first point I wanted to speak about.

And to fix this industry, to be honest with you, I strongly believe that the drivers need also about electricity, insurance.

They need training.

There's people that go to the job, they don't go to any training.

That's one thing that people forget to speak about.

The training is very important.

Anybody that rented or give the bike to a...

any other person, he needs to train him the rules and the consequences of all the bad things he's going to commit.

And the third point is just neither DCWP, TLC, any one of them that take the lead of this company or any other organization.

To be honest with you, they have to have a uniform price.

It has to be visible, seriously visible for anyone, not only the tourists.

It has to be displayed for everyone to know about the price and to maintain the safety of the city that everybody is coming to enjoy.

Thank you so much.