Dubai: Magnus Olsson, co-founder of the Middle East and North Africa car service app Careem, wants Gulf governments to reform labour regulations to allow foreign workers to work for multiple employers.
Olsson, who is also Chief Navigator at Careem, told reporters at a conference in Dubai on Sunday that allowing foreigners to work as freelancers, or part-time will allow for greater flexibility and opportunity among companies in the region.
Currently, foreign workers are tied to their employers who act as their sponsors for their visa. Labour laws in the Gulf do not allow foreign employees to be hired on a part-time basis and many workers have non-competing clauses in their contracts. While one way around this is for foreign workers to be self-employed by registering their own company in a freezone and then work for others on a consultancy basis, Olsson said adding that reform is needed.
“In a lot of these new economies ... people can work part-time a couple of hours when they have time extra to do some driving, where they can work extra to do something else to enable this thing and to be able to split their expertise between multiple companies or organisations. That will require some labour changes,” he said.
Olsson admits it is a big request but says it’s an area that “will have to evolve.”
Currently, Careem strictly uses Road and Transport Authority (RTA) licensed drivers in Dubai due to local laws and regulations in the emirate, which Olsson said is limiting.
“If anyone could become a captain [driver] for a few hours when they have extra time that would enormously open the pool [of available drivers],” he said.
In other counties such as the United States or Australia, drivers of mobile app car services such as Careem or Uber are not required to be registered with a government department or authority and many drive part-time. But Olsson said labour reform allowing freelance or part-time work will create other opportunities too.
“[Let’s say], I need a top marketing person that can work for a few hours for us, few hours for someone else and a few hours for someone else. Currently, the labour system doesn’t support that,” he said.
