JAKARTA - Complaints spread on X this week about difficulty finding motorcycle taxi and food delivery drivers in Jakarta during peak hours of Ramadan, and the Indonesian Transport Workers Union (SPAI) says the shortage is real, and largely comes down to money.

SPAI Chair Lily Pujiati told Bisnis on Tuesday that the number of active drivers has been falling, squeezed by a combination of low delivery fees, pickup distances that rarely match what the fare is worth, weak consumer spending, and rain. 

“Sometimes the pickup distance for an order is far and not in line with the delivery fee,” she said. “The economy is also unstable, so consumers are cutting their spending. Rain is also a factor.”

At the center of SPAI’s long-running complaints is the platform commission, currently set at a maximum of 20 percent per trip under Kemenhub Ministerial Decree KP 1001/2022.

Drivers have repeatedly demanded that it be cut to 10 percent. Tens of thousands demonstrated outside the DPR on May 21 and again on September 17, 2025, winning a promise from Mensesneg Prasetyo Hadi in October that President Prabowo would issue a Presidential Regulation capping the cut at 10 percent.

That Perpres has not been issued. A draft Online Transportation Law also entered the legislative agenda in November 2025, but has not been passed either.

“SPAI has always been consistent in its demands for a Perpres or Keppres on online transport worker protection, so that situations like this don't repeat,” Lily said.

Nabiyla Risfa Izzati, a labour law lecturer at Gadjah Mada University, criticizes the platforms, “My take: businesses that thrive in legal loopholes will struggle to sustain themselves once those loopholes are patched.”

“This is why app developers don’t really comply with tariff and deduction regulations, not to mention worker protections like social security, wages, etc.”

Gojek, one of Indonesia’s largest ride-hailing platforms alongside Grab, did not respond to a request for comment from Migrant Times.

The complaints arrive days after Gojek claimed that it paid out Rp110 billion in Hari Raya bonuses to around 400,000 driver partners in early March, double the platform’s 2025 budget.

Analysts including Gani of OCBC Sekuritas, along with research houses Macquarie and Mandiri Sekuritas, also said the outlook for GoTo Gojek Tokopedia shares is improving ahead of the company’s March 11 release of the 2025 financial results.