At a time when religion is taking a bigger role in Indonesia, a new motorbike-hailing service that is deemed acceptable by Islamic law has started to boom in the country.
The service is called Ojesy, which is derived from a combination of the words ojek (motorcycle taxi) and syariah (sharia). It is a service that employs only women drivers and serves only women passengers. The business now operates in 20 cities in Indonesia and has already provided services to 600 women riders.
It was created to accommodate adherence to the Islamic sharia law in which women and men who are not related are prohibited from touching each other.
However, according to founder Evilita Ardani, it also serves to protect women and empower them.
“We do not allow our drivers to wait on the side of the road,” Ms Adriani said, as quoted by abc.net.au. “We don’t want to disturb women’s role as a wife or daughter. By doing so they can still carry their duty and earn additional income with Ojesy.”
Like other popular ride-hailing services in the country Ojesy is app-based, but unlike the big players who are now using e-wallet for their payment system Ojesy uses conventional bank transfer for its payment method.
Photo courtesy of www.cradio.co.id
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