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Dubai cabs prefer to take 'white people': paper
"Trying to catch a cab in Dubai? Make sure you are well dressed and 'white' otherwise it's possible the cabbie will ignore you and leave you stranded [...]
"Cabbies in the booming UAE emirate of Dubai admit they use racial profiling to decide whether or not to pick up a passenger, to avoid heavily congested roads which hinder their efforts to meet their quota, UAE paper XPRESS reported.
"'All Africans want to go to Al Nasr Square. But there, we get stuck in traffic…(and) we work on a commission basis," the paper quoted a Pakistani cabbie as saying.
"Westerners or 'white people' are preferred passengers as they usually go to the upscale part of town, meaning less or no traffic, and 'they don’t like traffic and give tips,' the cabbie added.
"The paper said Indians, Bangadeshis, Sri Lankans and Pakistanis were also considered undesirable because they usually head to old Dubai, meaning bumper-to-bumper traffic.
"Arabs and Eastern Europeans are classified as "risky" because many of them go to Sharjah—a neighboring residential emirate—which, during rush-hour, means hours of traffic. [...]"
Source: Alarabiya.net (Dubai-based, Saudi-owned), June 27, 2008
Posted at: 2008-06-27
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