Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Stop auto, stop!
|
Commuters do not want the authorities to give in to the demands of the autorickshaw drivers
|
Photo: G. Krishnaswamy
Daily woes Auto problems
“Let them strike. At least after some time I will be saved from the regular squabbling that I am forced to have with the auto drivers,” says Bhooma Lakshmi walking out of a bookstore in Somajiguda. “This time the government should not give in to the demands and postpone the deadline for installing digital meters,” she says.
Her sentiments are echoed by a few others as they wait for the Secunderabad-bound buses near the Greenlands stop. Wait at the bus stop and not a single auto zips past or slows down, it is only the overloaded Setwin buses and RTC buses that are transporting people. “I am really going to have a problem for dropping my child to school,” says D. Srinath of Attapur who is now forced to drop his child at the Lotus School. “I hardly ever use autorickshaws, but when I do, I know that the meters are tampered as the distance and the tariff rarely tally,” says Srinath.
It is a license to fleece. The autorickshaw meter we are talking about. The dead giveaway about the tampering is the number that comes aslant instead of straight up. Working on a simple gear system, all the meter tamperers have to do is ground away one or two teeth of the gear and voila, the profitability of the auto goes up between 10 and 20 per cent.
Once the digital meters are installed, it is this cut in profitability that the auto drivers fear, and if the government stands firm then the middle classes can hope to save that much money and hassle.
SERISH NANISETTI
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
