JEDDAH, 2 August 2005 — It’s really a matter of supply and demand. If you have a shortage, prices go up. If they go up high enough, a black market may emerge to cash in on the demand.

Little did the Ministry of Labor expect its decision to ban the internal transfer of iqamas for drivers to start a race for black-market drivers where the prices go up every lap until they reach a level some might call “highway robbery.”

As for the demand, it’s created by families in need of a driver. As for the black market, it’s operated by recruitment offices and institutions willing to stretch the letter of the law for quick profit.

And the quick profits are there. The demand for drivers has driven the salary of these black market drivers up to SR1,500 per month.

To trick the system, these institutions give the driver an authorization letter to work as a driver with a family.

To avoid breaking the law, they do not accept requests in the office, but rather, they allow drivers to search for a family to work with and bring the letter from the family asking the institution to work as a driver. Families pay SR50 to the institution to allow the worker to work with them as a driver in addition to paying the salary of the driver, many of whom turn over a large part of their inflated wages back to the institution. People who employ these workers soon see them leaving to other families for more money. To solve the problem of the driver leaving they increase their salaries by up to SR150 to stay.

Of course, it’s not necessarily a smooth road even then. Some of the drivers actually are plumbers or carpenters. In the worst-case scenario, the employer may find out that the one thing their new employee isn’t — is a driver. Take the sad case of Abu Saleh, who tried a black-market driver after his driver went on vacation for 2 months.

“I got a black-market driver through an agent to serve the family while my driver was away,” Abu Saleh said. “He did not have a driver’s license with him at the time I met him, but he assured me that he had one.” He paid the man SR1,400 monthly — SR400 more than his regular driver.

There was one other difference, the new driver didn’t know how to drive, which was remedied by the new driver giving himself a self-taught “crash course” in Abu Saleh’s car. “His driving and repeated accidents cost me over SR9,000 in just two months in repairing the family car and paying damages,” Abu Saleh said.

“I discovered later that he lied to me and didn’t have a driver’s license.” Oof! Of course, good, law-abiding folk who turn to black-market drivers wind up getting a good dose of guilt for every mile they ride. “They are only good for driving within the city limits,” said Samir Ahmad, a black-market customer.

“I cannot take them to Makkah for fear that police might stop and book me.” A black-market driver from India, Muheldeen, said that working as a black-market driver is profitable for the institutions but not for them. He said that he has to pay half of his salary back to the institution.

“The company we work for benefits from our free time by actually renting our services to families. Yes, the salary is high because these families turn to us when they are in desperate need of our services, but it is temporary, and we are constantly on the move searching for a new job after we are done with one.”

Will Muheldeen ever get to rest? Will the Ministry of Labor figure out a way to put the brakes on black-market drivers? Will many Saudi families realize that they actually are running instructor-less driver-training schools with each trip they take to the mall? Will wages rise so high that Saudis will decide that working as drivers might not be such a bad job after all? After all, it’s really a matter of supply and demand.