New Dh3 Careem fee not imposed by RTA

Dubai: Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) said it has not imposed any surcharge on Careem, contrary to the ride-sharing app’s claims that it now has to charge new fees from users.

Careem, which also operates in Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Ras Al Khaimah, said on its website that the new Dh3 trip fee had been imposed “in light of new fees and regulations for services like ours across Dubai”.

The RTA regulates all transport in the emirate including taxis, and inked a deal with Careem in October.

“To manage and ensure financial sustainability, we have had to pass some of these fees on to the trip fares,” the company’s statement added. It did not directly mention the RTA.

From midnight on January 23, 2017, “each trip you take with us originating in Dubai will carry a surcharge of AED 3”, it said.

But the RTA said that no such fee had been placed on Careem by them, despite earlier media reports.

In a statement to Gulf News on Monday, the RTA “confirmed that it has no relation to the fare increase imposed by the Careem company of booking limos via its smart app”.

On the same day, an Uber spokesperson said that the app had not added any surcharge yet for Dubai users.

Careem did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Gulf News.

Last week, Uber signed a deal to come under what the emirate’s transport chief, Mattar Al Tayer, has called the “RTA umbrella”. The deal allows users to use the Uber app to access the services of the RTA’s 14,000 existing cabs — similar to the October deal inked with Careem.

Under the terms of the deal, the two bodies will look into provided lower-cost transport options in the city, such as the use of cheaper carpooling services.

“For us, there is going to be a fee on the premium products [such as chauffeured limo services], but we haven’t decided what that fee will be [yet],” the Uber spokesperson told Gulf News.

“What’s really important is that we’ve accepted that fees are necessarily a part of regulation with the RTA,” they added.

“We’re looking at a low-cost option separately … we haven’t determined how and what that looks like yet.”