UAE: Deliveroo, a food delivery platform, stops its services over poor working conditions

Many residents and citizens, including owners of restaurants in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), took to social media to unleash their anger over ‘delays’ as delivery giant ‘Deliveroo’ faces some issues related to work. 

Restaurant co-owner Annu George reported that they had not received any order from Deliveroo the whole day. “It is quite unusual,” she said. “Usually, we receive several lunch orders on the Deliveroo platform, but today, we received nothing. Towards the evening, we received an email from them that they were working on getting their issues resolved.”

Many riders posted on social media, which suggested that hundreds of them objected to alleged pay cuts and denied to cooperate till they were given better working conditions. The company reportedly cut order prices and increased the working hours of their motorists after there was a hike in fuel price. 

During a late evening, Deliveroo sent an email to its restaurant partners saying, “We are presently facing an issue with our riders, where riders are protesting and denying to attend their shifts and deliver orders. Rest assured, our team is functioning closely to fix this issue as quickly as possible while continuing to protect Deliveroo rider earnings.”

Some riders even took to Twitter and said that the delivery per order rate had been cut significantly, while many others claimed they were being made to work for much longer hours. 

Many others demanded that they should be made direct employees of the company rather than being employed through a contractor. 

What is Deliveroo company?

Deliveroo is a British based online food delivery company established by Will Shu and Greg Orlowski in London, England, in 2013. It functions in over two hundred locations across the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (UK), Ireland, Australia, Hong Kong, France, Belgium, Italy, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait.