With the launch of Careem and Uber in Pakistan, our lives (or those who’ve had access) certainly became easier as getting to one place from another became extremely convenient. But there is always another side to the story, with the arrival of such services the local taxi drivers and rickshaws certainly faced an issue.
A couple of months back Uber and Careem has included the options of calling a rickshaw from their apps and now Careem has gone one step further and has included 25,000 local taxis to its fleet in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad.
Read: Leveraging Technology To Provide Sabaq To The Masses: In Conversation with Hassan bin Rizwan
However, now if you open your Careem app you can see an additional option of selecting a taxi to travel to your destination. With Careem Taxi, you will no longer have to grab a ride from the road or haggle for rates. Careem will use the same state of the art rate meter with taxi drivers.
Previously the situation between local transport owners and ride-hailing services got so bad that they had to stage a large protest against them in front of the headquarters of Punjab Information Technology Board in Arfa Software Technology Park.
Empowering the local taxis with digital means may definitely be the right way forward for a digitized transport mechanism… or at least we hope so!
