Brisbane City Council has cancelled its contract with e-scooter company beam after a whistleblower claimed the company has significantly under-reported the size of its fleet.
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00:00Well, the Singapore-based company has been in hot water over these accusations from the
00:06last few months.
00:07Now, the allegations suggest that Beam had been intentionally deploying additional e-scooters
00:14into cities which were exceeding the maximum capacity that city councils had allocated.
00:20It's also suggested that Beam had been manipulating data for the monitoring systems that were
00:25in place that were reported back to those city councils, and that's why they didn't
00:29realise that this was happening for quite some time.
00:32Now, Brisbane City Council has confirmed that they have cancelled their contract with Beam
00:37as of last Friday over these allegations.
00:40It does follow the Wellington City Council in New Zealand, which has also cancelled its
00:44licensing agreement with Beam as of last Friday, as well as Auckland Council, which has suspended
00:50its agreement with Beam from last Tuesday.
00:53Now, in statements that have been released by those respective councils, they have alleged
00:58that after conducting their own independent auditing reports, they found that the daily
01:02maximum capacity of e-scooters within each of their city council areas had exceeded e-scooter
01:08capacity by about 100 scooters, so it was quite concerning, and they say that that was
01:14a reason behind cancelling and suspending those licensing agreements.
01:17Now, for companies to operate e-scooters, they have to have licensing agreements, and
01:22that includes paying registration fees for each of those vehicles in their respective
01:27cities, as well as a portion of the fares that are paid by riders are then contributed
01:31to those city councils.
01:33Now, the tech firm operates in more than 30 cities across Australia, and on its website
01:38it actually still lists Brisbane as one of those cities that it supplies to, but the
01:43ABC understands that the Brisbane City Council has not only terminated its contract, but
01:48it is conducting its own internal investigations.
01:51The ABC has also reached out to Beam for additional comment, but this has certainly raised concerns
01:57across the country in city councils that do have Beam licensing agreements in place, as
02:02those internal investigations do continue.