• Abu Dhabi Taxi Driver Salary 2018
• Dubai Taxi Driver Interview
• Dubai Taxi Driver Training

When you get in a taxi in Dubai you never go the same way twice immaterial if your start and destination is the same.
Taxi drivers get paid on a commission of the fare charged ergo the more they charge the more they make.
It's never a great amount of money involved but if they do it to every client I suppose this could be a substantial amount of money over a monthly period.
The bizarre thing is, I'd tip them more than they inflate the fare but because they inflate the fare I don't tip.
Just take note of routes taken and cost if you intend to go to the same place (Mall etc) a few times.
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The average salary for a Taxi Driver in United Arab Emirates is AED 6,800. Visit PayScale to research taxi driver salaries by city, experience, skill, employer and more. Taxi drivers earn approximately 25 - 35% on the total revenue earned, they have daily targets of 500 - 800 AED from which they would make close to 250 - 300 AED daily.

This is what a day looks like for Babi, one of the lady taxi drivers of Dubai. She wakes up at 4 a.m., to get to work by 5 a.m. Her goal is to make 500 AED a day, or about $135.

Wearing a uniform that identifies her as a lady taxi driver, she picks up customers at one of the two airports in Dubai. If she's lucky, she meets her earnings goal by 5 p.m.; if she's unlucky, it's 7 p.m.

Then she returns home, to a one-room apartment, plus kitchen and toilet, that she shares with her husband and two daughters, 9 and 11. Her evening is consumed with cooking, dinner for the family, plus lunches for everyone for the following day.

She works six days a week, with one day off, Friday. On that day, she does laundry and rests.

'It's life,' she said, in English. 'It's not meant to be easy.'

The lady taxi drivers of Dubai are one of the oddities of this new world city: If you're a woman, landing at the airport, you get offered their services. I've taken up the offer twice, and curious, struck up conversations with both of my lady taxi drivers. I wanted to get a small glimpse into the lives of working class people caught up in the boundless energy that seems to characterize Dubai. My lady taxi drivers were both entrepreneurs: working for themselves, on commission, like taxi, Uber or Careem drivers anywhere.

The sense I got from listening to these women is one that will feel familiar to women everywhere: There's the question, always, of time: A wife and a mother has next to none, not even enough time to think or plan for the future. And a younger woman is very aware of time, too: This one was putting off men in the hope of saving money to start a business, but even in their 20s, most women, like this one, are aware that the clock is ticking.

Trying To Bootstrap From The Working Class

It's easy for a foreigner and a tourist to see the glittering surface of Dubai. There are many wealthy Emirates, and a substantial Emirate middle class, supported by generous government benefits.

Behind that is the huge expat community of Dubai, said to outnumber nationals by about 9 to 1. There are many professional expats in Dubai, and, then, there is a huge and probably impossible-to-calculate number of working-class expats, many from countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan.

It's harder to peer both behind and underneath the class structures in Dubai: These two lady taxi drivers offered a narrow window in.

On the advice of people familiar with Dubai, I've disguised both of the lady taxi drivers' names to protect them. The UAE government has a reputation for tolerance, but there are pockets of corruption. And while both women were brave enough to give me their names, I don't want to expose them to random retribution from a minor government official for sharing unvarnished stories about life in Dubai.

At the main Dubai airport, the lady taxi drivers wear pink hijabs, at Sharjah, they wear black. Babi, a Sri Lankan in her 30s, was married; my other lady taxi driver, Natsinet, an Ethiopian in her 20s, was not.

Natsinet, with a college degree in marketing earned at a university in Addis Ababa, came to Dubai eight years ago. Ethiopia has a GDP per capita of a little more than $500 per person: jobs are scarce. She first worked in a shop, but when she saw a notice for training to become a lady taxi driver, she jumped at the chance. The work was easier, she said, and she is earning about 7,000 AED a month.

She led the way in her family. Her older sister and brother followed her to Dubai from Ethiopia. Pooling their money, they live together in a three-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Dubai, sending some cash home to their parents.

'I like driving,' she told me, and for the moment, despite the urging of her sister, she was resisting marriage or dating. Instead, she was putting some money aside in hopes of starting a business, importing items to sell to the Ethiopian community in Dubai, which has been estimated at about 100,000.

Abu Dhabi Taxi Driver Salary 2018

Babi told me a much different, and harder story. The daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants, Babi was married and divorced in her 20s. Then she met a man from Pakistan and became his second wife. A limousine driver, much of his income goes to support the first wife, back in Pakistan. When they met, he told her that he was separated from the first wife, and no longer loved the first wife, but that changed. Now, when the family's two-month vacation rolls around every two years, they spend it back in Pakistan with the first wife.

'I believed what he told me,' Babi said with a laugh.

After her two daughters were no longer babies, she went to work, so that the family could afford to send them to school, which costs about 1,100 a month. With rent an additional 1,200 a month, the family is not able to save much, and until recently, Babi was also caring for her mother, who has diabetes.

'She wouldn't stop eating sugar, when I was away at work,' Babi told me, so she sent her to her brother in India.

Dubai Taxi Driver Interview

I asked Babi about her hopes for her daughters -- college, perhaps? -- hoping to steer the conversation onto a more positive note. She looked at me a little bit blankly: 'They say they want to study,' she said. Then, she shrugged, seeming to say that the possibility of that happening was very far away.

The sense I got from listening to these women is one that will feel familiar to women everywhere: There's the question, always, of time: A wife and a mother has next to none, not even enough time to think or plan for the future. And a younger woman is very aware of time, too: This one was putting off men in the hope of saving money to start a business, but even in their 20s, most women, like this one, are aware that the clock is ticking.

Dubai Taxi Driver Training

Trying To Bootstrap From The Working Class

It's easy for a foreigner and a tourist to see the glittering surface of Dubai. There are many wealthy Emirates, and a substantial Emirate middle class, supported by generous government benefits.

Behind that is the huge expat community of Dubai, said to outnumber nationals by about 9 to 1. There are many professional expats in Dubai, and, then, there is a huge and probably impossible-to-calculate number of working-class expats, many from countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan.

It's harder to peer both behind and underneath the class structures in Dubai: These two lady taxi drivers offered a narrow window in.

On the advice of people familiar with Dubai, I've disguised both of the lady taxi drivers' names to protect them. The UAE government has a reputation for tolerance, but there are pockets of corruption. And while both women were brave enough to give me their names, I don't want to expose them to random retribution from a minor government official for sharing unvarnished stories about life in Dubai.

At the main Dubai airport, the lady taxi drivers wear pink hijabs, at Sharjah, they wear black. Babi, a Sri Lankan in her 30s, was married; my other lady taxi driver, Natsinet, an Ethiopian in her 20s, was not.

Natsinet, with a college degree in marketing earned at a university in Addis Ababa, came to Dubai eight years ago. Ethiopia has a GDP per capita of a little more than $500 per person: jobs are scarce. She first worked in a shop, but when she saw a notice for training to become a lady taxi driver, she jumped at the chance. The work was easier, she said, and she is earning about 7,000 AED a month.

She led the way in her family. Her older sister and brother followed her to Dubai from Ethiopia. Pooling their money, they live together in a three-bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Dubai, sending some cash home to their parents.

'I like driving,' she told me, and for the moment, despite the urging of her sister, she was resisting marriage or dating. Instead, she was putting some money aside in hopes of starting a business, importing items to sell to the Ethiopian community in Dubai, which has been estimated at about 100,000.

Babi told me a much different, and harder story. The daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants, Babi was married and divorced in her 20s. Then she met a man from Pakistan and became his second wife. A limousine driver, much of his income goes to support the first wife, back in Pakistan. When they met, he told her that he was separated from the first wife, and no longer loved the first wife, but that changed. Now, when the family's two-month vacation rolls around every two years, they spend it back in Pakistan with the first wife.

'I believed what he told me,' Babi said with a laugh.

After her two daughters were no longer babies, she went to work, so that the family could afford to send them to school, which costs about 1,100 a month. With rent an additional 1,200 a month, the family is not able to save much, and until recently, Babi was also caring for her mother, who has diabetes.

'She wouldn't stop eating sugar, when I was away at work,' Babi told me, so she sent her to her brother in India.

I asked Babi about her hopes for her daughters -- college, perhaps? -- hoping to steer the conversation onto a more positive note. She looked at me a little bit blankly: 'They say they want to study,' she said. Then, she shrugged, seeming to say that the possibility of that happening was very far away.