‘Like slaves’: Lebanon’s delivery riders struggle as crisis bites

A file photo of a delivery worker from the mobile app Toters holding plastic bags of groceries, during a lockdown and a 24-hour curfew to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in Beirut, Lebanon on Jan 20, 2021. — Reuters

BEIRUT: His motorbike’s tank almost empty, Ahmad had barely enough fuel to make one more delivery and get home for the night. When the 24-year-old Syrian’s phone pinged with a food order in a distant suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut, his heart sank.

Ahmad could ill afford to lose the work he picked up through local delivery app Toters – a precarious lifeline as Lebanon’s economic meltdown destroys thousands of jobs and plunges three-quarters of the population into poverty.