Hiked

Image by Qiao-Da-Ye賽門譙大爺 via Flickr
Sharjah taxi fares are on the rise again - today's papers  carry the joyous news that a minimum fare of Dhs10 will now apply for any taxi journey and that the tariff will increase from Dhs1 per 650 metres to Dhs1 per 620 metres. The reason is, apparently, the franchise companies (who always seem to get cited when the fares are raised rather than Sharjah Transport, the body that is responsible for deciding the hikes).

The Dhs10 minimum charge has been in place in Dubai for some time, but it does seem a tad odd that in Sharjah we are now going to pay a minimum of Dhs10 for any journey when, back in the good old days of yore, private taxis were regulated to having to accept Dhs5 for any journey within the emirate. Ah, the good old days of yore, eh?

Sharjah Transport told Gulf News and others that the rises in the petrol price were to blame, which isn't unreasonable given that fuel prices have gone up by something like 25% this year (based on my Dhs80 going up to Dhs100 to fill up da Paj at ADNOC). However, this is the second price hike this year, the tariff used to be Dhs1 per 800 metres - and with drivers' fuel expenditures and empty/fare ratio carefully capped and monitored by the franchise companies, the new price rises should more than offset any fuel price rises.

Interesting, perhaps, that the anecdotal evidence of regular cabbie Mr G is that it's the bus services that are hurting more than the fuel price hikes. With the merry little yellow Brazilian 'Busscar' buses steadily plying their routes all over Sharjah for no more than a handful of coins, many people have been opting for public transport. With these rises, you could only draw the conclusion that more will join them and the drivers are going to get squeezed even harder.

I can't see the normally somewhat lugubrious Mr G being too happy about this one...

Taxi

Image via Wikipedia

Regular cabbie Mr. G unable to take the booking, I was reduced to pot luck on the roadside. Unusually fragrant, today's surly gentleman wanted to know if I 'mallum' our destination. I've been here before and so asked him how long he had been a resident of this fair land.

"This my first day."

Oh joy, deep and frabjous. Off we went on our merry way and I discovered, by that strange form of linguistic osmosis that allows us to communicate, that our man is called Iqbal and he hails from Peshawar. He is highly amused that I am called Al Iskandar and that no, I don't speak Peshwari. I don't go around toting an AK47 and growing opium either, but I thought it best not to let him know that in case he thought I was soft.

We proceeded unusually slowly, it has to be said. My experience of gentlemen from Peshawar in the past has been a series of breakneck rides at intolerable speeds. I have always wondered if this is from experience dodging the bullets and IEDs of the mountainous Afghani border-lands. But Iqbal was a man who believed in not only driving within the 20kmh 'grace zone' but actually below the speed limit.

After a while I could stand it no more. It was like someone reading their powerpoint, a terrible slow-motion replay of obviousness stretched out to an unbearably tedious timeline. We were on the Etihad road from Sharjah to Dubai when I cracked.

"Mr Iqbal, you can go up to 120km on this road."
"Not good."
"Really? What is problem?"
"Brakes problem."


Mr Iqbal had obviously been a victim of 'give the crap car to Nobby Newbloke' and I felt for him. But my sympathy was nowhere near as intense as my relief when we finally freewheeled up to our destination.

A New Iniquity

Image by gerry balding via Flickr

Mr. G. tells me of a new iniquity being heaped on the heads of Sharjah’s already stressed-out cabbies. A new dictat from Das Company means that now they’re not allowed to buy more than Dhs50 of petrol in any given day – if they do, it’s to come out of their own pockets.

All of the cabbies working for the new ‘regulated’ taxi companies are remunerated purely on a commission-only basis – there is no basic salary whatsoever paid to them, despite this being in contravention of the current labour law.

They have to make Dhs 275 a day in fares to even have a chance of making money on their commission-only deal. If they make less, apparently they’re fined by some companies. They’re also fined for a wide range of things, from failing to stop for a fare through to picking up near the airport. In fact, a lot of people walk from Sharjah airport all the way to the ADNOC station on the airport road to avoid the Dhs20 surcharge that the airport taxis levy. Mr G got fined Dhs150 for picking up a passenger outside the ADNOC station, which has not made him happy. Given that he is an unusually lugubrious chap at the best of times, this is fascinating to observe. The inspectors who prowl the streets preying on unsuspecting cabbies are, of course, remunerated on the number of fines they dole out, a nicely sadistic way of harnessing unenlightened self-interest.

Interestingly, Dhs50 doesn’t even fill a Toyota Camry. At the 'new' "We've put the rates up to accommodate the drivers" rate of Dhs1.5 per kilometre, a taxi would have to travel over 180 Kilometres with a paying passenger to make the Dhs275 daily minimum. And, of course, taxis spend a great deal of time driving around looking for a fare - never more so than in Sharjah right now, where the buses roam left, right and centre for pennies.





You do begin to wonder what they'll think of next...

Do We Treat Our Taxi Drivers Badly? Hell, Yes!

Image by Qiao-Da-Ye賽門譙大爺 via Flickr

I have frequently posted in the past about my regular cabbie Mr. G and the iniquitous conditions that cabbies work under in the UAE since private cabs were banned and replaced by the taxi companies. These companies have been treating cabbies effectively like indentured labour, fining them huge amounts and saddling them with all sorts of charges and 'extras' that most people out here expect as part of their conditions of employment.

Gulf News has reported on one group of cabbies who have filed a complaint against their employer, oddly enough going as far as to name the company. The report is doubly surprising given the reaction of the company when GN contacted them for comment.

The drivers are complaining that their salary, a nominal Dhs300, isn't actually paid as they're employed on commission and are made to pay over Dhs3,000 for their visa, Dhs 1,000 for their uniform (must be designer brand stuff) and Dhs 26 a day for 'operational costs'. If they don't make a minimum of Dhs 1,200 a day, they're fined Dhs 200. They're complaining that they have to work 12 hours a day and beyond to keep their heads above water.

Given that our safety is in their hands, 12 hour shifts seems dangerous - and I know that Sharjah cabbie Mr G not unusually works 16 hour shifts, 365 days a year.

The company's response to Gulf News was brilliant.

"They work 12 hours, seven days a week because we consider them partners and not employees," Metro's GM told GN, going on to confirm that drivers must also pay for operational costs, which include insurance, plate registration, car cost, car maintenance and for all needed expenses.

The taxi companies are, apparently, 'working on getting rid of signing the labour contract'. Now there's a solution!.

For a company charged with egregious behaviour, unfair practices and treating its staff appallingly to respond with 'Hell, yes!' is pure genius.

We're re-writing the rulebook of PR by the day, folks... By the day...

Do UAE Driving Test Reform Ideas Miss The Mark?

Image via Wikipedia

The National's position on the doorstep of the Federal Government has allowed the newspaper to quickly carve a leadership position in the UAE's news scene - it's been consistently breaking stories that other papers aren't within a mile of, frequently scooping them on important moves being made or studied.

One such story today is the report on reforms being considered to the UAE's driving test regulations. Possible changes being suggested by consultants include requiring Brits, Canadians and Australians to pass a local theoretical and practical test before they can drive here, requiring taxi drivers to have two years' experience of driving in the UAE before they can drive a taxi and also allowing people to learn to drive, if they wish, with an unlicensed but experienced driver rather than being forced to go to a driving school.

Two of these reforms I totally agree with. The third is ridiculous and unworkable.

The moves are being bandied about by UK based consultancy Transport Research Laboratory, which is advising the Ministry of Interior. TRL, previously a UK government entity, was privatised in 1996 and offers counsel and services based around transport and logistics.

The reform idea that tickled me enormously was bringing in the UK practice of allowing people to learn to drive without being forced to go to a licensed instruction. In the UK, it's quite common for people to learn to drive with a family member, perhaps having a couple of 'top up' lessons with an instructor before sitting the test. These days, newly qualified drivers have to wear a green 'L' plate for a year after they qualify, as well, which I do think is a good idea.

The driving schools are obviously up in arms about that one, because they'd lose their easy source of revenue from giving a million (or whatever the mandatory number is this week) lessons to hapless learners. The standard of instruction (Sarah took some top-up lessons here and was horrified) here is often cited as being impossibly low and close to useless. I have certainly seen learner cars driven with incredible incompetence both with one and two occupants.

So I think that one would be interesting - and probably see the pass rate increase exponentially.

The Brits need a license idea, I support purely on the basis of fairness. It's not fair that we don't have to take a test while other nationalities do. If we are as superior and wonderful as we all think we are as drivers, we should breeze it. An alternative would be to widen the 'no license' requirement to any country that had professional standards of driving qualification and a similar road sign system to the UAE, but maybe that's just me being silly.

However, while I have no problem with British nationals being required to take a theoretical and practical test in the UAE, I cannot fathom the reasons that TRL's Britta Lang gave to The National - “The knowledge of local road safety requirements is quite incompetent. Many people don’t know the road signs and are not aware of the safety requirements.”

That's an unsustainable assertion (unless it's based on extensive research of the knowledge of local traffic signs among those newly awarded with their first residence visa, which I doubt) and an odd one, to boot. The traffic signs in the UAE are based on British signs, using the same colour coding and shapes for mandatory, advisory and cautionary signs. I can think of no traffic sign (please do prove me wrong) in use here that wouldn't be instantly recognisable to any Western driver, except perhaps the 'mind the camels' sign, which would require at least a passing knowledge of the shape of a one-humped ungulate.

In fact, in order to comply with local safety requirements, I have had to learn a number of new skills, including pulling over when the Nissan Patrol up my arse flashes and beeps at me, watching out for blind maniacs with a death wish crossing six lanes of motorway without signalling, predicting when taxis are about to stop on a sixpence with no warning because they've spotted a fare and the principle that swapping lanes puts you instantly in the wrong no matter what circumstances cause the collision, including willfully driving into you because 'it's my lane'.

In order to survive as a driver in the Middle East over the past 20 years, I have had to unlearn pretty much every rule of driving taught to me in my home country. I have no problem sitting a test here. I have a huge problem being told it's necessary because I don' t understand the traffic signs and safety requirements.

But the daftest proposal, and one that showed how outside consultants with no experience of the local environment can go impossibly wide of the mark, was that of insisting that taxi drivers should have two years' experience of driving in the UAE before they're taken on.

It's surely obvious to the most idiotic, drooling incompetent that only employing taxi drivers with 24 months' experience of driving in the UAE is a completely unworkable proposal and should never have made it past the unwise contribution the lippy intern made to the first working group discussion. And why you would propose safety legislation for taxi drivers when every misbegotten escapee from Tora Bora, Helmand and Swat is currently bombing around the UAE in bald-tyred, battered deathtraps hefting tons of rock, shit and cement, passes me by entirely.

In fact, the most sensible proposal in the whole article was made by a driving school owner, who presumably hadn't been consulted by the consultants. Ehad Esbaita, general manager of Emirates Driving Compan, suggested that professional drivers should have to undergo a more rigorous course of instruction and certification and that this would have an instant effect on road safety in the UAE.

I thought that one idea alone was worth everything the consultants had to say and more.

Guest Post - Phillipa Fioretti

Today, as a treat, you can have a guest post from Australian author Phillipa Fiorretti.

My morning routine, once I have settled and have my evil espresso next to me, is to go through my overnight emails from the Northern Hemisphere and cruise around my favourite blogs reading the latest posts. I’m always pleased to see a new post from Alexander on Fake Plastic Souks, because I know that usually I’ll have a bit of a giggle.

Alexander and I are writing pals, having ‘met’ on Authonomy last year. I helped to edit the manuscript of his book, Olives, and I have to say there is nothing more soothing after a tiresome day than to pour a drink, pick up a sharp pencil and savage his work. I’m cruel, brutal even, but I’m fair. I won’t stand for any nonsense with adverbs and deal ruthlessly with any signs of lazy expression. And I don’t smile while I do it.

But when I arrive at his blog I’m off duty and care not if he uses three adjectives in a row. I read all the posts, although I tend to skim the technology ones unless there is an interesting angle – like the Etisalat patch for Blackberries, or the intricacies of using SatNav devices. The ones I really like are usually about the new train service, taxis, and commentary on daily life in Dubai.

I live in Australia and geographically the closest I’ve ever been to Dubai would be Kashmir. Most of us here, unless we know a friend or relative living in Dubai or have business connections there, think of money, expats, finance, money, sex on the beach and Emirates Airlines. As a kid, the constant references, (as in news stories), to the Middle East really bothered me. I was on the east coast of Australia and the Far East looked pretty close to where I was, so why was it Far, and what was the East in the Middle of?

Maps of the world, in Australia, show this continent in the centre of the Southern Hemisphere. Thus the Middle East is actually the North West and the Far East is the North. America is the Far East really, according to my junior map reading skills. So had someone made a mistake and the rest of the world just went a long with it? I began to ask questions and demand some answers.

But long and involved parental explanations were lost on me and it wasn’t until I started reading history books for my own pleasure, as opposed for school history teachers, did I get it. Two of my favourite writers on the region are Edward Said and Tim Mackintosh-Smith.

But while books like these humanise countries and explain the historical intricacies, they don’t give the immediate, daily minutiae that really brings it alive in one’s imagination. Posts such as Hard Times on Mr G. the taxi driver, NufNuf coping with the Abu Dhabi traffic, Sharjah’s Number 14 bus, the Etisalat saga and the strange creature called Modhesh.

I’m sure there are other blogs about Dubai written for the visitor or armchair traveller, but Fake Plastic Souks isn’t speaking to them and that’s what makes it so fascinating to me. I see the dust and the traffic and the air conditioned towers and all of the stories a travel writer would leave out.

And there is never an overload of adverbs to jolt me out of my reverie, cause me to sigh and shake my head, or make me want to slice away the excess words.

Phillipa's most excellent blog, which mixes her respective fascinations for art and writing quite neatly, can be found here. Her first novel, The Book of Love, is to be published by Hachette Australia next year.

The Inevitable Metro Post

Image copyright Hit Entertainment

The Metro has so far eluded me. I don’t mean that I haven’t managed to get a ride yet - I have been staying away precisely because I don’t want to get stranded in a crowd of 2,000 shoving, jostling punters while all the inevitable teething problems are ironed out. (Isn’t it funny that teething problems are always declared ‘inevitable’ only after they have occurred?)

Mind you, I would love to know quite who was so utterly asinine as to put a big red DO NOT TOUCH THIS button within reach of any Dubai audience.

I have pointed out before, on blog and radio alike, that I am amazed that anyone could think we needed an ‘awareness raising’ advertising campaign that poured millions down the plughole in telling us that there’s a metro there. We can see the blasted thing – we’ve spent two years queuing up to drive around the holes and pilings, watching the roller-coaster swoops and loops of track being slotted together and admiring the (beautiful, incidentally) ‘armadillo’ stations.

The lack of informational campaigns on the other hand, the absence of any concerted attempt to build awareness and understanding, has arguably contributed to the many problems experienced over the first few days of operations. Quite apart from the lack of 'traditional' media such as leaflets, Z-cards and the like, there's no dedicated website and the FAQs and so on available on the 'Rail Agency' section of the RTA website site are useless - and it doesn't look as if the rail site has been updated since early August!

Perhaps explaining the seeming lack of useful information, Gulf News today (not, for instance, six months ago) tells us the RTA is to 'launch a campaign to educate the public on how to use the Metro and the culture of train travel'. Duh.

But no, the reason it's eluded me is none of the above. It's that it doesn’t appear to start from anywhere near me or end up anywhere I’d want to go. For instance, I could see myself parking up at Deira City Centre, doing a wander around the shops and then taking the Metro up to, say, Mall of the Emirates. But then I’d likely fall foul of the time-limited parking.

My office is in Satwa, a significant distance from the nearest Metro Station – as is pretty much anyone on the coastal side of Sheikh Zayed Road. I can’t realistically get a taxi to the station as Dubai has a minimum fare of Dhs10 for a cab. So If I want to go to Dubai Internet City for a meeting, I’m taking a cab to the station, taking the train and then taking a cab to my meeting. That’s Dhs24 for the one-way journey. If I want to play feeder buses, I can. But I don't know where they operate from and to. And I'm not really into waiting around for buses when I work for a business that bills my time by the hour. Even if I can get the bus in a timely fashion and connect to a waiting train, ("Hold the train for Mr McNabb"), I'm in for at least a 40 minute journey - one that otherwise would take me 20 minutes by car.

So far I’m struggling to see quite why, ahem, it’s ‘my metro’. I’m sure with time I’ll find out a way to use it. But for now it remains a complete irrelevance to me. Except for the amusing anecdotes being shared by intrepid friends who have chosen to ride early - from two-hour waits on static trains to British security guards who've never lived here before treating locals like you'd treat a queue-jumper back in Blighty (the results were apparently quite comic), through to delayed trains, massive queues and general cluelessness.

Nobody has so far used the word debacle, incidentally. I claim the first.

PS: This week's got a sort of transport theme. Unintentional, I can assure you!

PPS: If you're interested in some good consumer feedback from the horse's mouth, take a look here on the UAE Community Blog! Fascinating stuff!

Hard Times

Image by jtyerse via Flickr

Mr G., our taxi driver, was more than usually lugubrious when he took us into Dubai this weekend. Times are hard.

I call him ‘our’ because we have his mobile and can call him to a pickup – he’s reliable and we both trust him – he’s lived here since the 1970s and was a ‘proper’ taxi driver before he was forced to sign up to drive for The Man.

He’s become something of a habit for us – given that Sharjah taxis have no call center and no ‘control’, you can’t actually book one and have to take your chances on the street. That’s not a great idea if you’re decked out in your glad rags on your way to a dinner, for instance, probably the only reason we have, apart from airport trips, to take a taxi.

The downside is that he has absolutely no road sense whatsoever. How he is still alive constantly amazes me given how many miles he must cover. Easily distracted, impossibly cautious at times that call for decisive movement and hasty when caution should prevail, his performance finding, unravelling and fitting his mobile’s hands-free when the phone rings is a comedic masterpiece that he can, on a good day, extend for aching, reaper-baiting minutes. But we like Mr G.

Business is bad right now. He has to make something like Dhs270 in fares to be in the money and finding that cash is hard work – the new Sharjah bus system, chaotic though it may seem to the occidental eye, is depriving him of customers. The Express Bus from the airport to Rolla and the Fish Market costs just Dhs5 and has cut down on airport runs, while the bus from the Fish Market into Dubai is a mere Dhs10. And for Dhs25, you can get to Abu Dhabi – apparently it’s Dhs20 on the way back, because the Sharjah government takes Dhs5 and Abu Dhabi doesn’t. That’s fair enough – Abu Dhabi’s got the money for grand gestures, after all.

You can start to see how cabbies are hurting. Making it worse, waiting for a regular bus (such as the infamous no-timetable No.14) is just as good or bad as waiting for a taxi and so many casual passengers are voting with their pockets too. Without a call centre, the more expensive cabs of today’s national taxi companies are finding it hard to compete. But the company doesn’t really have an imperative to make urgent changes because the cabbies are absorbing the pain.

How long they will continue to do so quietly and compliantly remains to be seen.

NufNuf’s Last Freakout?

Image by K!T via Flickr

I have already told of my delight at the fact my new Nokia N86 8MP (or 8PM or whatever it is) has a built-in SatNav that can negotiate the terrifying urban-planner road grids of the desert oasis city of Al Ain but NufNuf, as we have christened her, got her acid test last Thursday.

Trouble was, I didn’t know she had been using quite such high quality acid with such gleeful abandon.

I did my usual Thursday morning slot on Dubai Eye Radio’s Business Breakfast, sharing it with special guest star Rebecca Hill, the director of the Middle East Public Relations Association or MEPRA. Presenter Brandy Scott, Rebecca and I had a happy blether about the new Middle East Public Relations Awards that MEPRA is launching for the first time this year.

A slight twist in the tale was that Rebecca and I were due in Abu Dhabi, a good 2 hour drive away, to present a MEPRA Twitter Workshop. This was to be the third of a series of MEPRA Twitshops presented by Spot On Public Relations’ MD and partner in crime Carrington Malin and yours truly. It was supposed to start at 9.30am, and the radio slot ended at 7.45am so we were already a tad tight for time. If we didn’t get lost in Abu Dhabi, the city of a Million Confusing New Roadworks, we might just get to the meeting room by the time a desperate Carrington faced down a packed room of some 40 agitated PR professionals jeering and throwing buns and stuff.

I’m not a big Abu Dhabi boy. The last time I was down there I got horribly, irrevocably lost. In fact, every time I’ve done down there I’ve got lost.

Everyone in Abu Dhabi says the same sort of thing to you: 'Oh, it’s easy, just turn right by the intersection with Sheikh Zayed 1st or 7th Street, take the second left by the Bilbalbol Sebastopol Lebanese Supermarket and we’re the building behind the purple railings you’ll see the third watertank down from the second dustbin to your left as you face the coffee pot opposite the blue mobile phone shop sign. You can’t miss us. Everyone knows it.'

The invariable result is a hot, sweaty and frustrated mess. Harried and hooted by Abu Dhabi’s aggressive and unpleasant drivers, you drive round in ever-decreasing circles until you finally explode in an act of spontaneous combustion. By some miracle of trial and error you’ll finally find your destination (in a completely different place to that described to your by your potential host and somewhere that nobody in the world has heard of) and be met with a smile and a genial, 'Did you find your way alright?'

This, then, was a job for NufNuf the Nokia SatNav. Get us there first time around. And by golly, she almost did it. The trouble started when we hit the Eastern Ring Road, which NufNuf thought was still desert. She also lost the GPS signal. And she started to have a head-fit that resulted in a strange and electrifying silence. There’s nothing worse than driving with a SatNav and approaching a T-junction to the sound of silence. Whichever way you choose to go, unguided by ‘the voice’, you’ll hear ‘Route Recalculation’.

After a silent eternity and some panicky guess-work, NufNuf suddenly sprang into action again and, thanks mainly to her, we got there with half an hour to spare. Pats on the back panel for NufNuf, then.

But the journey back was a totally different affair. My first mistake was swapping Rebecca for Carrington (when offered a swap of male for female company, people, demur. That is my advice. Demur.). My second tactical error was ignoring NufNuf’s calm ‘Follow The Road For One Kilometre’ for Carrington’s snatched, ‘No, that’s crap. Turn left here.’

I mean, one of these people is a professional SatNav, after all!

That unscheduled turn started us on a nightmare, harum-scarum journey through the busy, alienating skyscraperscape of Abu Dhabi that I will not forget in a long time. Because NufNuf freaked out.

'In 300 Metres, Turn Right,' said NufNuf. And then, 'Turn Left' She added calmly in an almost reassuring voice.

'In 200 Metres, Turn Right, Then Left.' Okay. We turn right. 'Turn Right.' Umm, we just did. 'In One Kilometer, Take the U-Turn.' But what about the Left Turn? 'Turn Right here.'

What?

'Turn Slightly Right.' Umm, 'Turn Left.' Whaaat?

The car behind me is blaring its horn, the lorry to my left is cutting in to the right and there’s a LandCruiser undertaking me from behind. The ubiquitous sound of beeping is like an experiment in sensory deprivation, drowning out every other sensation but fear, an auditory waterboarding. My mouth is dry as we swerve to stay alive.

By now NufNuf has lost the plot completely. 'GPS signal lost. Route Recalculation. Turn Left Here. I Am An Armadillo. A Moose Once Bit My Sister. Please Hold, Your Call Is Important To Us. We are the Borg.'

But if NufNuf was being scary, Carrington was worse. Every time NufNuf did her next HAL9000 Goes Insane As He Starts Dying Scene impersonation, he’d talk over her with some new pronouncement of techno-doom. 'It’s gone mad. We’re going to die. Nobody will ever find us. Turn Oval here.'

Between them, they manage to dump me into an insane world of techno-fear, acid flashback surrealism mixed with real-life, heart-attack inducing danger.

We finally made it to the ring road, recognisable monuments looming into view. ‘Would you like fries with that?' said NufNuf in a reassuring voice as Carrington leaned back with a pleased sigh of ‘Told you the bloody phone was wrong!’

Next time I’m taking a taxi and leaving Carrington and NufNuf together. They’re made for each other.

For the first time, I see my own disintermediation as a positive blessing...

The Inshallah Bus

Image via Wikipedia

Sarah's christened it 'The Inshallah Bus' because it will come when it comes. There's no actual timetable as such. It just comes, Inshallah.

Sharjah's infamous No. 14 bus service (there is no 13, there is no 15) leaves from near McNabb Mansions on its meandering progress through Sharjah to the airport. On the plus side, it costs just Dhs3 to get to the airport. On the minus side, it takes over an hour to make its stately and undocumented way. You just find a bus stop that says 14 on it and wait for a bus to turn up. They leave the portakabin on the sand terminus on the Ajman border every 15 minutes from 05.30 or so, but when they actually get (or turn up) anywhere is pure guesswork.

I asked the nice man at the terminus for a timetable and he laughed delightedly. There is no timetable. I suppose at least you can't say the buses in Sharjah don't run on time.

It's an ill wind for the cabbies, though. Our regular cabbie, the lugubrious Mr. G., blames the Inshallah Bus for at least part of the recent alarming drop-off in customers. He's more and more dependent on his regulars to help him meet his harsh target of over Dhs250 per day in revenue now that many people take the bus instead. An express service that goes from the airport to Rolla Square and the Vegetable Market costs just Dhs5.

Having just come back from leave and injudiciously managed to misplace his mobile (and, therefore, a number of those regulars he needs so badly), Mr G. is having a tough time right now. He's our regular precisely because we trust him, like him and have his mobile number. I tip him a bit every trip and so we have a taxi on call. We'd use the call centre but of course there isn't one - there's no booking service at all for taxis in Sharjah.

Buses with no timetables and cabs with no booking system. Thank God at least some of the old, quixotic, unregulated pottiness of life in the Emirates remains.

Taxi

So Sharjah taxis have implemented the Dhs20 surcharge for going to Dubai but, as far as I have seen, Dubai taxis have not implemented the charge the other way.

The charge was ostensibly to make it easier on drivers reluctant to brave the traffic and not be able to return with a fare due to the odd rule that cabs can't pick up fares in other emirates. A driver rewarded is a driver keen to serve, is the theory, no?

As Gulf News (690g) asserts, in the report linked above: "Taxi companies in both Sharjah and Dubai lobbied for the new flag-fall rate. The decision was taken to provide an incentive to taxi drivers, who have sometimes refused to make the trip between the two emirates, especially during peak hours or on holidays, leaving passengers helpless."

The truth, certainly according to the cabbies I've spoken to, is a little less poetic.

Out of the Dhs20, the cabbie gets only Dhs5. Dhs13 goes directly to the company and the rest gets eaten in 'fees and commissions'.

As usual, the cabbies get screwed over, the cab companies take our money. We get the same old woeful levels of service but get gouged again.

Amazing.

Taxis

So Sarah's been trying to find a taxi service in Sharjah that has taxis and a service. This is not easy. She stumbled across this site, which contains a number of pleas from lost voices out there on the Internet. They rather strike a chord for anyone who has to use the Sharjah (and, increasingly, Dubai) taxi services...

"Are there any Taxi's in Sharjah? They are either not visible or they refuse to take you to where you want to go because of the traffic problem in Sharjah. If the distance is too near, they lock their car's doors because it will mean that their income won't be enough. What is the purpose of the Taxi service then?"

"The driver behaved as if he is not aware of any roads. He asked us to get down from the taxi and walk to find out the hospital. I told him that I will pay you any amount that is shown on meter. Since he could not speak English or Hindi/Urudhu or any alngauge legibaly it was very painful to listen his abuses."

"i gave 50dirhams and he gave 20dirhams change, i thought at first that he was just mistaken that 10dirhams into 20dirhams so i said : my friend, this is only 20dirhams i need 10 dirhams more but the taxi driver said NO it's like this because i will go back to sharjah and then i said how can be like this everyday i came by taxi with the same fare but they never charge me more, then he really doesn't like to give my 10dirhams change then i said ok then if u dont want just stay here and i will call the police when he know that i'm very serious finally he ok shut up and he give me the 10 dirhams change. i'm making this complain because i don't want other people to be victimize of this greedy taxi driver."

"I'm not sure whether anybody will read it or it can make any impact, but still I write it just to satisfy myself from the insult I felt when I tried to talk to your customer service no."

I wonder how indicative this is of consumer opinion in general? I rather think it is... no?

Stealth

With the car in the shop and Al Habtoor getting ready to take a significant chunk out of me in return for the usual skimdisksreplacebrakepads experience, I'm travelling to work this morning with Mr. G. and about a million other poor bastards. Sharjah is gridlocked and there are roadworks every which way you go. It's madness. However, it's an ill wind and all that - a two hour journey gave us plenty of time to catch up on the arms trade (Pakistan is apparently awash in Rs10,000 AK47s, compared to an ex-factory price ten times that), murdered Lebanese starlets and, of course, what's new in taxi-land.

Although I thought, given the number of conversations I've had with Mr G. on the subject, that I had a relatively good grounding on the iniquities of the transport companies, I didn't know, for instance, that the drivers are forced to go to the taxi company's own garage for minor repairs and pay for them themselves at rates fixed by the company. As the company garage is operated as a profit centre in its own right, drivers are finding that these simple repairs are coming with a pretty hefty price tag.

This, surely, is yet another classic example of the fact that these drivers are, in fact, indentured labour.

Mr G is also quite gleeful with his new mobile: operator Du apparently gave the taxi company 1,200 SIMs for the drivers and Mr. G. is delighted at the per-second billing as he makes a load of short duration calls such as 'I am outside the villa now, Sir' and the like.

Personally I'm less than impressed with this stealth marketing. Not only are they giving the damn things away now, they've kiboshed the Du Test with my taxi driver!!! Grrr!!!

Pooling

Do go to the RTA's new Sharekni website and have a giggle.

Yes! Thanks to the brilliance of the RTA, you can now register to share your car with other people! Other people? Yes! Other people!

For those wondering what on earth is going on about this carpooling business, it was illegal to share your car with other people in the UAE because of the prevalence of illegal taxis - ie people sharing their cars for money. As I've pointed out in the past, if the taxis were a little nicer, neater, more knowledgeable about destinations and carried passengers at a reasonable market rate, the demand for 'illegal' taxis would be practically non-existent.

However, the issue was, apparently, that people were running 'illegal taxis', hence the move to make all car-sharing technically illegal. I'm really not sure that the level of 'illegal sharing' was such a safety threat, or revenue threat to the RTA, but there we go. The imposition of the law into this situation may seem a little draconian: others might have run an awareness campaign about the dangers of car sharing, re-evaluated the taxi service to make it more competitive or perhaps even just put up with a little natural attrition for the taxi company as those less well off shared their cars.

Having imposed the move as law, this obviously poses some problems, such as 'If I want to give my friend/colleague/neighbour/ a lift to work/the club/the beach then I damn well will'. And nobody would be particularly keen to live in an environment so mad as to actually seriously enforce such a piece of legislation. Would they?

The RTA's new solution to the issue, the 'Sharekni' service, attempts to allow drivers to register, stipulate the type of passengers they're willing to share with, the days they're happy to be 'driver' on etc - and then lets them log up to four passengers together. The site also supports passengers looking for a driver. The site then issues a 'permission' document that will satisfy even the most ardent police officer when you're stopped to see who the four strange people in your car are.

As Kipp points out, the Sharekni car pooling website isn't exactly a Web 2.0 marvel. Rather than making it all fun and social, the site is more like a government form filling exercise. The 'quick search' failed to find anything I tried and the registration link failed, the form failed and pretty much everything else I tried to do failed, too. I gave up in the end.

Although I'm sure they'll fix the site in time, the whole idea really does still make my mind boggle. To try and legislate, and enforce that legislation, against people having other people in their cars is surely an utterly pointless exercise. To offer them the chance to register for the chance to share their car with strangers for no incentive other than a 'permissible' sharing of the cost of petrol ("Cash exchange is not allowed between the passengers and the car owner; however the car owner can be compensated by paying the gas price.")?

I somehow don't think it's going to be wow of the century... but then I'm just cynical and overdue leave, so I might simply be wrong...

Trucked

The scenes outside our local ADNOC have started to become apocalyptic: a line of 45 buses stretches out onto the sand-roads behind the petrol station, blocking access to our house from the main road: the line of trucks on the other side stretches out just as far, curling into a strange mandala of decorated, jangling, garishly painted flat-backs. We’re looking at well over 100 vehicles stacked up for the final approach to cheap diesel: Dhs10 per gallon less than Dubai’s filling stations. For a lorry with a 100 gallon tank, that’s a lot of Mars Bars. Every ADNOC’s the same - a line of waiting diesel consumers stretches around the back, down the road - any which way they can, really!

Lugubrious taxi driver Mr G says it’s because Dubai won’t buy refined product from Abu Dhabi and insists on importing the stuff. Interesting, the thought that this could all be down to a sort of family squabble.

Whatever the reason (and we have been rather short of investigative insight from our trusted ‘analogue’ media sources on that one, so Mr. G.’s speculative take is the best thing I’ve heard), the insane queues continue. It must be awful driving one of those orange tankers queued up outside Dubai Shitty City: ten hours to dump your load and then another five hours to fill up with enough diesel to get through the next day.

Paying Salik would be a relief for them: in fact, I could afford to let both queues cross Salik at my expense and still have credit left over, thanks to the muddled administration of the toll that likes to say ‘It’s not our fault our system doesn’t work’...

Silence from the RTA continues. Gulf News' report on Salik's failings today just makes me feel even better about my chances of recovering the money they took as a result of their screw-up.

GnnnnnNNNNN!

Taxi

Right. Here comes a question I've been meaning to ask everyone I know for a while now...

What is WRONG with ‘illegal taxis’? The Dubai Road and Transport Authority (RTA) has been insisting on car poolers jumping through hoops of fire whilst visibly chewing on photocopies of their grandparents buttocks so that they can stop the societal evil of illegal taxis. But the very reason for a market developing in illegal taxis is that there is a clear and unfulfilled market need. Whatever happened to ‘laissez-faire’ – the attitude that built Dubai?

Nobody sensible would take an illegal taxi in a market where there were well-regulated legal taxis that offered a prompt, clean, efficient and pleasant service at a reasonable price. But if someone wants money for a ride and I'm willing to pay it and be outside the regulated environment, then that's my lookout – my risk and my choice to make. The better the ‘regulated’ taxis, the less likely I am to go ‘unregulated’.

If the regulated taxis were a bunch of irresponsible, rude, self-serving bahoos that won't pick up fares, won't travel to a range of places, won't abide by the regulations, don't know their way around and generally try and fleece all and sundry, then I'd be very tempted to do the unregulated thing. Particularly when trying to travel in difficult traffic in what must be growing into one of the world’s most hellish rush hours – an experience unrelieved by the existence of any viable public transport. Particularly cross-Emirate public transport. Because if there were a cost effective viable public transport option, punters would surely be taking that rather than an unofficial taxi! No?

So the very market for unregulated (‘illegal’) taxis is created by the inefficiencies of the regulated (‘legal’) market. If there’s a market in illegal taxis, it’s surely a clear sign of failure on the part of the RTA, isn’t it? Or have I got this all wrong because I’m not a ‘traffic expert’?

Informal markets exist when formal markets fail. And most formal markets start as informal ones. It’s called innovation!

Using regulation to stifle market innovation is something that we've seen before (Skype), but it don't make it any the less ugly...

Minted

As Bill Gates’ visit to the Emirates dominates the newspapers, I’ve dropped my car to Al Habtoor in order that they can gouge me in the traditional, and distressingly regular, gouging spree that is Servicing A Pajero.

Mr. G, our regular cabbie, took me into work and so, as we slowly pushed our way through the choking, aggressive gridlock, he updated me on the dark, subterranean world of the UAE’s taxi drivers. And it’s pretty grim stuff. With all the fuss we’ve seen in the international and even local media about construction labourers and their conditions, it’s strange that nobody’s looked at what the taxi companies are doing. Apparently, drivers are resigning in droves, driven to going back home by a rigidly enforced Dhs 300 per day target and a 16-hour day, 7 day week as well as a system of punitive fines that is surprisingly similar to the labour conditions of industrial revolution Britain. Drivers are fined on a seemingly totally arbitrary basis for not meeting their targets, for any damage to their cars or for pretty much any other reason you can think of.

Their replacements are new labour, recruited fresh from overseas and so not aware of the grim conditions they’ll be working in. And, apparently, a good number are Afghanis carrying (all too easily available, apparently) Pakistani passports.

Mr. G’s particularly upset that 'the company' took Dhs 400 from him recently. When he asked why, it turned out it was the fee for a mandatory training course he had been given. When on leave recently, he’d had a tooth pulled and the operation had gone wrong and complications delayed his return to work. He turned up back in the UAE week late, having faxed to say he would, with a doctor’s report. The subsequent Dhs 1,500 fine was finally reduced to Dhs 500 after much bargaining.

There has been a spate of robberies from cabs in Sharjah, something like 13 car windows smashed in December alone, apparently. No, I didn’t see the headlines, either. But what really got me about this was the fact that Mr. G knows one of the drivers who was burgled and he was robbed not once but twice. For, once the police had come and taken a report then gone, the car company fined the driver Dhs 300.

There was plenty more along these lines as we sat in the traffic. So why stay? I asked him. I’m not, he replied. The second this visa’s up, I’m off.

Fair enough. But if Mr G is to be believed (and he’s an honest cove with no particular reason to slip me a line) there are thousands of these men out there working these mad hours, in a state of dangerous tiredness, for pennies - and being (illegally?) fined at every turn by the companies that employ them.

Taxi!

I've always found taxi drivers to be essential to getting a quick feel for how things are going in a particular country at a particular time. Mr Ghulam, our 'regular' driver, is no different. A Ghulam's eye view of the world is often an interesting counterpart to my own.

Travelling, I always make sure to talk to any cabbies I meet. This has often resulted in me having a remarkable 'inside view' of the place I've just landed in. Once, in Jordan, it resulted in me having my fortune told by an excellent numerologist. He was also, incidentally, driving the taxi but he was better known in his circle as a numerologist and was consulted by many as a result of his talents. I could see why - an uncanny reading and a refreshingly careless attitude to the less metaphysical question of foreign objects occluding with our own co-ordinates in the space time continuum meant that I was deeply glad to be able to get to the end of the reading with no direct reference made to the imminence of my meeting with my maker. That meeting is not one I am particularly keen to hasten as I am keenly aware that said maker is going to be expressing a great deal of disappointment, probably forcibly.

Anyway, Mr. Ghulam's highly amused that the UAE's petrol pumpers (with the exception of ADNOC, for some reason) have decided not to accept credit card transactions - a situation that I hate to say I predicted some time ago as the result of the nasty little spat between the petrol companies and the credit card companies. Ghulam's point of view is that they're forecourt pirates who are charging too much for petrol anyway and should give the banks the fees they're demanding.

My own personal view is, not unreasonably, that the overwhelming majority of bankers are scum and should be hung from meathooks - particularly anyone whose bank has the letters H, B, C and S in their names. I'm hugely amused to see the UAE's petrol companies take on Visa and Mastercard as the card companies try to levy their payment taxes. I'm sure the little guys (the petrol companies) won't win in the end. But there's a 'Passport to Pimlico' sort of David against Goliath fight against bullying, faceless force and willful bureaucracy that the Brit in me admires immensely.

Trust a cabbie to have it in for the petrol companies, of course. I always enjoy chatting with the cabbies at Heathrow about how much I pay for petrol here in the UAE (we pay per gallon what they pay per litre, a fun challenge for people with scientific calculators to work out what the ratio actually is I'm sure). It cheers them up, the poor dears.

I've always bought my petrol in cash. Just in case you're interested, Ghulam who, as a cabbie, is an expert, says that credit card accpeting petrol company ADNOC's a damn sight cheaper than anyone else anyway.

The Du Test

So Du announced it has reached 850,000 subscribers this week. I do find that interesting in view of the continuing consistency of the results I am receiving from applying The Du Test.

The Du Test is designed to gain a holistic view of the comparative penetration of mobile operators in a given market as a ratio of deployed client side devices in customers’ terminal prehensile upper organs. See?

It consists of giving your mobile number to people without the prefix that the TRA has insisted on introducing to differentiate the two operators. Etisalat’s is 050, Du’s is 055. So you talk to a hotel reservation service, or the electronics shop to arrange a delivery, or the bank to complain (invariably) or the taxi company. And you give your number as the last seven digits only.

Now, if something like a fifth of all people in the UAE (pre-amnesty) are using a Du mobile, you’d expect at least one of those conversations to contain the words: “Is that 050 or 055, sir?”

And not one, not.one, has done so yet.

Nobody I know uses a Du mobile. Some people registered and bought the sim because they could. Others bought in and rejected the service. But nobody I know, personally or professionally, uses it.

Where are they, then? Hands up, you 850,000 brave subscribers! Be heard! Wear it on your shirts with pride! Let us know that you DO du! Run round the malls singing Dudududududududuuu at the top of your voices!

Hmmm. Funny. Silence so far...

Death Stalks Ras Al Khaimah

Mr. Ghulam, our regular taxi driver, knew the driver who was murdered last week in Ras Al Khaimah. He's a little sad and puzzled by it: the victim was a gentle, gentle man with a family, according to Mr. G.

Apparently taxis taking long fares like to lodge the passenger’s ID with the police just in case they refuse to pay for some reason (with a Dhs200 fare, if the passenger doesn’t give it up, the driver pays – and that’s a helluva lot of money for a cabbie here) and a Sharjah taxi, a pal of Mr. G’s, had declined the fare after the two passengers refused to lodge their IDs and were angry and threatening. He watched another taxi pick them up and never saw the driver again – his body was found the next morning, as the newspaper reports.

The man that refused the fare is currently feeling a sort of guilty relief.

Mr. G. is a little worried that people have taken to stabbing taxi drivers: this is a new and unwanted abuse being heaped on the heads of a bunch of people who already have it pretty hard. His least favourite night-time fare isn’t Ras Al Khaimah, though: it’s Fujeirah. “I won’t take the fare. Past Masafi it’s dark and lonely and if they are two and you are one, what can you do?”

Sharjah taxis are also currently doing all they can to avoid Dubai fares: it’s increasingly hard for them to make their money when they write off two or more hours on the return journey in an empty cab. They aren’t allowed, of course, to pick up in Dubai. This means that lots of people are shouting at them now.

Mr. G. remains phlegmatic…