Bahrain wants to ban licences for the poor
The forward-thinking nation of Bahrain is at it again. This time, some politician there wants to block foreign expats who make less than BD 500 (Dhs 4900) from applying for driving licences.
According to Gulf News, only foreigners hired as domestic or office drivers will be allowed. All this nonsense is planned in a bid to reduce traffic. Apparently, there are too many foreigners on the roads, adding to congestion. Former members of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights described such a ban as discriminatory. I say former, because the organisation was shut down ages ago. And this is the place chosen as an F1 venue.
Why not add more to the rules, like banning 15-year-old cars or just kicking out all 90,000 criminally-insane Bangladeshis from Bahrain. That’ll solve the problem of ugly old cars as well as eliminate crime.
Comments
thatsit(mohamad)
i think this rule is not knew…i heared about it since 2 years…let me tell you something…its better to put some taxes on using cars than having those stupid rules…and that also applies here…if they put some taxes on using cars that the owner has to pay it every time he renew his ownership it will be mush better than having those prepaid parkings and the SALIK thing…we just pay some cash one time instead of paying a bit for the parking and another amount to recharge SALIK…because after activating this maktoom toll gate…it can be seen that nothing changed alot…as it was before even introducing this system…let them make it easy for us and for them and let us pay one amount for the RTA every year…like 3K-4K..i know its too much…but if you calculate it there is no much difference.
thatsit(mohamad)
OPS..*i think this rule is not new
assassin
so, who is going to take take taxi’s job in their country?
Boris(K-sport)
hey! good point! taxi jobs and then there’s the delivery people and commercial vehicle drivers. what they do? this rule sux. road tax is acceptable and banning old ugly cars is sorta a good way unless the guy who gives up his old car goes hunting for a new one. LOL. now, school bus drivers and… HEY THESE TRAANSPORT SERVICES ARE VERY IMPORTANT!!! this rule is insane!!! i dont like Bahrain one bit anymore.
thatsit(mohamad)
^^^^
good point
Sayd
Salam Mashfique,
Actually the rationale behind this is perhaps to outlaw the illegal taxis that go around Bahrain picking up people for much lower prices than the legal taxis. Invariably such taxis are driven by indian nationals (much less by Bangladeshis). There’s a market theory issue here and their approach to the problem is really stupid and dumb.
The issue is the legal taxis charge way over the expected rate for short hops and they will never run their meters (like a 2km ride from the airport to my house will atleast cost 60-100 dirhams).. mind you petrol is darn cheap here.. 0.8 dirhams a litre. hence there is an obvious demand for correctly priced taxis..
to top it all off.. our local brethren who do drive the legal taxis are the biggest whingers ever and they are GREEDY!! even a senior work colleague of mine stated this.
so there’s alot of problems.. a sane and rationale government would allow the taxi industry to employ all people (whether expat and local, just as in UAE and every where else in the world) and get these greedy taxi drivers to find other higher paying jobs after retraining them.. yet this will probably never happen because of the foresight of the government.
v6turbo
You will only get less educated for 1.5 to 2k dhs. salary (irrespective of nationality). A Graduate for taxi driver..no chance..he/she would rather work in office as office assistant, peon, front desk executive or data entry clerk..
No Name
OK people enough talking garbage about Bahrain.
All u people do is post stupid things about us and make us feel guilty thinking u r the best………………………………….
Confused Expat
yeah… thats right… why dont you ban expats all together… I would love to see an average bahraini do labour work even for BD1000… What makes you people so special that you want to be paid 3 times that of an expat doing the same job when he is clearly more willing to work as hard as he can. The solution does not lie in discriminating against us but in working together with us to help build a better Bahrain. I love this country as much as any citizen, I was born and brought up here but nowadays I look back and feel the only direction we are moving in is backwards to the Stone Age.
shd
agree with confused expat
Murf
who comes up wid these laws maan?! The guy with the most oil or sumthin??
Resident of bahrain
I have lived for 10 years in bahrain and i love it like any other bahraini citizen, but to be honest bahraini ppl r very much against ppl frm asia like indian, bangladeshi, etc. they dont care wat they do or how hard they work. and the only ppl they care about r locals or westerners…
now im in saudi and i find it a lot better thn bahrain. no offence 🙂 🙂 🙂
Azmath Baig
There is no use if you make this agreement that the Basic Salary should be 500.000 BD it is loss for the Government and not for us
Regards
Azmath Baig