Middle East

‘So trapped’: A young Iraqi driver’s costly taxi to nowhere

What’s your cash value? A collection from the entrance line of the cost-of-living disaster, the place individuals who have been hit laborious share their month-to-month bills.

Title: Mumen Barzanji

Age: 24

Occupation: taxi driver

Lives with: father Najat (67), mom Sadria (55), brothers Ahmed (26) and Dawan (12), and sister Lavan (32). Ahmed, who works in IT infrastructure, and Mumen help their household.

Lives in: a two-storey home the place Mumen has lived since beginning. It’s on a quiet road on the outer edges of Erbil, the capital of northern Iraq’s Kurdish area. Mumen doesn’t have his personal bed room, and often sleeps on a mattress underneath the steps in the lounge on the bottom flooring. Sometimes, he sleeps on the roof, the place it’s virtually attainable to see town’s historic citadel.

Month-to-month family revenue: In April, Mumen and Ahmed’s mixed revenue was 2,143,100 Iraqi dinars ($1,614 on the official charge, which has been used on this article, and $1,478 utilizing the road worth – about 1,450 dinars to the US greenback in Might – which most individuals can entry and use).

Mumen took dwelling 693,100 dinars ($522), a mixture of incomes 471,250 dinars ($355) from the Careem taxi app he works for, which deducts roughly a fifth of his earnings for utilizing the service, and an additional 221,850 dinars ($167) for taking passengers on longer journeys to the mountains throughout Eid al-Fitr. As a self-employed taxi driver, Mumen’s revenue fluctuates. Some months he can earn 548,100 dinars ($413) for driving youngsters to high school.

Whole bills for April: 1,976,150 dinars ($1,488), which was spent on family utilities, groceries, gasoline for Mumen’s taxi and a expensive automotive restore. Najat additionally wanted medical therapy for his again in April, which coincided with the usually costlier Muslim month of Ramadan and Eid with the price of these celebrations and their worth hikes. The worth of 1kg (2.2 kilos) of sugar, for instance, went from 1,250 dinars ($0.94) to 2,000 dinars ($1.51) throughout Ramadan, Mumen says.

Read the full article here

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button