Uber’s growing operation in Bahrain affects local taxies

TDT | Manama                        

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com   

Reported by Zahra Ayaz

Although they are just a few years old, Uber and the bevy of other ride-hailing services are having a disastrous effect on Bahrain’s local taxi business.

As Uber has expanded around the world, it now operates in 68 countries, regulators have also been grappling with what type of requirement to place on Uber drivers, trying to balance user’s demand for the service with its impact on existing taxi companies.

Although it is having an impact on local drivers, the new Uber app is convenient and includes an automatic credit card payment process; as a result, several taxi companies released their own apps to make it easier for drivers to commute.

Uber is regarded as a private transportation company, and while local drivers did face financial difficulties, there were also official divisions made between Uber drivers and local drivers, according to sources.

Earlier, Bahraini taxi drivers had threatened to go on strike, if the authorities continued to disregard their existence. Locals’ drivers criticised the authorities for allowing the new ‘unsafe’ service to operate in the Kingdom and unjustly dominate the taxi business in a small country.

Speaking to The Daily Tribune, Saleh Mohammed, owner of Asia Transport, said: “Before, anyone who needed to go somewhere right away would call us, or customers who went to work would pay on a monthly basis, but now very few because it is simple to use mobile apps to catch a ride, but overall business is okay.”

Many taxi companies also went down during the Covid-19 pandemic, and customers were more reliable towards taking Uber, he continued, “and I now have customers like school children or women who go together to ‘Madrasa’ for learning.”

A study revealed, “The effects are complex while some have seen a loss in income. Uber has created more jobs than it has destroyed, demonstrated by the staggering expansion of self-employment following its introduction.

“With more jobs, it is also noticeable that Uber drivers were found to earn more than those in traditional taxi services. This is largely due to the fact that Uber software allows drivers to better optimise their time and services.

“The higher hourly earnings among self-employed drivers suggest that capacity utilisation, the amount of time passengers spend in the car, has gone up with Uber because of its platform’s improved passenger-driver matching. However, the effect has been the opposite for traditional taxi drivers, who have seen a decrease in the time a client spends in their vehicles.”