Around 1,000 taxis will hit the road by the end of July as part of the government's push for a fleet system, Commissioner for Transport Angela Lee announced on Friday.

She said five fleets – granted conditional licences last year – have begun trial runs and provided more than 120,000 rides.

The fleet operators are, Lee added, set to be issued official licences.

The government had, in the initial stages of the push, said the five fleets would operate a total of 3,500 taxis and that they would need to reach 60 percent of full operations to be granted an official licence.

One of the five operators, Amigo, said its fleet was only one-tenth of that originally envisaged, while the others did not reveal the exact sizes of their fleets.

Lee said this does not mean the licensing threshold has been lowered and that factors such as service quality and driver training needs have to be taken into account.

She said driver recruitment has been difficult.

“We acknowledge that some of the drivers are currently not too familiar with this new concept of taxi fleets and they have been waiting to know more about the individual operation characteristics of the taxi fleets,” she said.

The Labour Department, she added, had conducted many recruitment sessions to assist with the hiring of drivers and would continue to offer support.

Sonia Cheng of SynCab said the company's fleet has provided more than 110,000 trips over the past half year during a trial run.

She didn’t disclose the current size of SynCab's fleet but said she’s confident the company can meet the government requirements by the end of next month.

“I can't say for exact now, because we're still recruiting drivers every day," Cheng said.

"To be honest, there is turnover for drivers as well.

"Maybe they're trying different fleets, or they're trying to see if it will fit their lifestyle, whether they would like to work as taxi drivers.

“But I can see good progress because we are holding training [sessions] every week.

"There are about 90 [new drivers] every week, we will see that [meeting the government's requirements] will happen soon.”

Lee also said fleet operators are in discussions with Octopus to join its "Easy Ride" service after the electronic payments system giant announced in early June that the service would enable people to book and pay for a ride on its app.

However, no specific timeline has been announced for the start of the one-stop hailing service.