An update on COVID-19 financial assistance

The last few weeks have been hard for everyone. But we know they have been particularly tough for drivers like you.

With India in lockdown, most of your earnings have come to a standstill. In response, we launched a new Work Hub in the Driver app, which can help you find more work opportunities, these could even be at another company. We’re also developing resources to help make it easier for you to request financial assistance now available from many governments.

If you’re still on the road for services such as Uber Medic, Uber Essentials or Deliveries, you are providing critical services during this period—like getting essential workers to their jobs or getting essential items to people at home. To help keep you safe, we’ve begun distributing free disinfectants to drivers, and we’ve purchased millions of earloop face masks. Availability is limited, but we’re working hard to get these supplies to drivers, starting with cities in the most need. We also launched COVID-19 Resources, an in-app resource center dedicated to safety information and updates from us.

Over the last month, we’ve provided financial assistance to drivers diagnosed with COVID-19 or ordered to self-quarantine or self-isolate by doctors from government medical institutions. We moved quickly to announce this policy, even though acting quickly meant moving forward with limited information because we believed the most important thing to do was to provide support as soon as possible. 

Since then, many of you have told us that the policy we originally launched supported too few drivers and the process to get funds has been complicated and confusing. Today we’re revising our policy in 2 ways:

The new policy is in effect for all active drivers in India starting today. 

To be eligible, you must provide written documentation from a government public health official showing that:

Instructions on how to apply for financial assistance are here. We’ll aim to process your request within 7 business days. Before you apply, please carefully review all the requirements listed in the site linked above. When you apply, your Uber account will be temporarily put on hold as a safety measure to help limit the spread of COVID-19. Even though your account is on hold, we’ll still need to review your application to determine if you qualify for financial assistance. 

We know that establishing a maximum payment per person means some of the most active drivers will receive less than what they typically earned before COVID-19 was widespread. But by expanding eligibility, we hope this assistance can provide a modest form of relief for more drivers and their families.

As our communities face a crisis unlike anything we’ve seen in generations, you are doing essential work, and we are committed to supporting you. We are learning as we go. Because we can’t predict what another month will bring, we will continue to listen, act on feedback, and regularly review our financial assistance policy for changes.

The details above summarize our global approach to financial assistance for drivers should they become diagnosed with COVID-19 or get placed in individual quarantine by a public health authority. Individual countries may have specific requirements needed to comply with local laws, regulations, or business practices on issues such as documentation from medical providers, public health orders, or taxation of financial assistance payments. Specific country requirements are not covered on this site, and the eligibility criteria and assistance details provided above are subject to Uber’s need to make such country-specific adjustments. India and the United Kingdom are subject to different policies. Given that circumstances are changing rapidly, we also may modify this approach, including the amount of assistance given and the criteria, as conditions change.