Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – After a long day of ferrying passengers to and fro recently, e-hailing driver Nguyen was dejected to find he had spent half of his earnings on fuel.“I drove for around seven or eight hours, making around 240,000 Vietnamese dong [$9.11] and then I paid 120,000 Vietnamese dong [$4.56] on petrol,” Nguyen, a motorcyclist who connects with passengers via the locally developed super-app Be, told Al Jazeera, asking not to be identified by his real name.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list“I can’t survive with this amount of money in the city.”In Vietnam, the ripples of the US-Israel war on Iran are hitting many gig workers hard.The Southeast Asian country normally sources about 80 percent of its crude oil from Kuwait, but shipments have dried up amid Iran’s effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, driving up fuel prices.Diesel prices have more than doubled, while petrol prices have risen almost 30 percent, making getting from point A to point B an increasingly expensive proposition in cities such as Ho Chi Minh City, home to more than 7 million motorcycles.“Because the petrol price is so high, so many drivers are turning off the app, going home and just not working,” Nguyen said.“After today, I will turn off the app and stop working for a few days to see if the price goes down or if the government is helping in any way.” A Be dr …
