The single biggest obstacle to exporting my motor vehicles yesterday
wasn’t the paperwork or the payment. It was transport. I had to get both the
bike and the car up to Doha’s industrial area and then pick up a rental car and
get to work.
As the container terminal opens at 7am, I set off early,
arrived, and dumped the bike. Then I looked for transport back to town to
collect my car. Obviously there are no taxis patrolling the grotty, potholed
streets of the industrial area at 7:30. I walked a kilometre or so past rows of
wrecked cars jostling with new and used excavators to the Jeep workshop, and
phoned Karwa for an immediate taxi.
After spending 20 minutes being lied to by a recording about
how my call was important, I was advised that: “No taxi available until 12:15.”
How useless is that? The only taxi firm in the country, and
every car in the entire fleet is booked solid for nearly five hours. The joys of a monopoly service provider. No, I
don’t believe it either.
Eventually, one of the myriad illegal, unmarked, private
taxis stopped, and I got rather expensive ride back to town, grabbed my
car, and repeated the entire process.
Again, I waited outside the Jeep workshop. This time I was
able to flag down an actual official Karwa taxi, with a meter and air
conditioning and everything. The driver confirmed that Karwa’s call
centre was next to useless, and he was fed up with being berated by customers
for being half an hour late when the call centre had only given him the pickup
information two minutes previously.
In the ancient olden days, Doha’s taxi fleet consisted of
millions of wobbly-wheeled orange-and-white cars, erratically piloted by
Afghani shepherds. They were very cheap and, crucially, in plentiful supply. It
was virtually impossible to walk anywhere in Doha without being tooted:
obviously any pedestrian is in need of a ride. Qatar’s effort to make the place
a little more upmarket resulted in all these mobile traffic offences being
removed from the roads and replaced by a fleet of shiny new powder-blue Karwa
taxis. The trouble is that the overall budget appears to have remained
unchanged. Instead of millions of crappy cars, Doha now has a fleet of about
nineteen shiny ones.
I have complained to Karwa about the inadequacy of the taxi
fleet and the booking system whose effectiveness varies from erratic to
non-existent. It’s basically a waste of oxygen, and the only benificiary is
Qtel. The best answer I ever received was that more taxis were coming soon. Not
that this would help my need for one tomorrow at some obscure hour of the
morning. (So early, in fact, that the sparrows wouldn’t have even finished
their sprout masala.)
I have basically given up on taxis. A pre-booked car has
never, ever arrived on time. When I attempted to book an 6am trip to the
airport I was told that no cars were available before 8am. When I tried to book
48 hours in advance I was told to call back tomorrow. I’m renting a car for my
last month in Qatar in preference to attempting to use the dysfunctional
abomination masquerading as a public transport system.
]}:-{>
