Uber, Careem to recruit women drivers in Saudi Arabia

Ride hailing services in Saudi Arabia are working on plans to recruit women drivers, after King Salman last year issued a royal decree allowing women to obtain driver's licenses, CNN reported.

As the decree is to be implemented started June 2018, currently all drivers employed by the two ride-share firms operating in the Kingdom —Careem and Uber —are men.

Dubai-based Careem said it has launched a series of 90-minute training sessions, in the Saudi cities of Riyadh, Jeddah and Al Khobar, targeting Saudi women who already have valid driving licenses, acquired while abroad.

The training sessions are conducted by existing female Saudi employees at Careem (working in administration roles), and cover topics such as road laws, customer service techniques, and how to use the application's platform, the report said.

"From the first moment, we announced our willingness to welcome the ladies to work on our platform," Abdullah Elyas, co-founder and chief privacy officer at Careem, was quoted as saying.

Careem has already received thousands of applications from Saudi women interested in becoming drivers, and plans to hire more than 10,000 “female captains,” or women drivers, by June 2018, Elyas said.

"Female captains will help us provide a better service to many women who want to travel but refuse to be driven by men," he said.

To ensure safety and privacy, Careem has announced that the female driver option will be restricted to female riders or families. It will also provide a call masking option, to block the contact numbers between the driver and the customer, to protect privacy, CNN report said.

Meanwhile, Uber has announced plans to open "one-stop-shop" facilities dedicated to recruiting future female drivers.

"We will partner with necessary stakeholders to facilitate the paperwork, training access, and access to vehicles, including access to driving schools run by third party partners," said Zeid Hreish, Uber's general manager in Saudi Arabia.

He added that Uber has also launched "listening sessions" for women in Riyadh, aimed at "shaping the company's priorities and upcoming plans for women in the Kingdom.”