Auto Drivers 3rd Meeting Finished
The removal of autorickshaw stands in order to prevent fleecing of passengers was the main demand from citizens’ groups at a meeting on autorickshaw meter fare held on Tuesday by District Revenue Officer S. Prabhakaran. He heads a committee formed by the district administration to arrive at a meter fare viable for autorickshaw drivers and passengers.This was the third meeting of the committee.
It had held a meeting each with citizens’ groups and autorickshaw drivers’ unions. The unions had stuck to their demand of Rs.20 as the minimum meter fare for the first one-and-a-half km and Rs.10 for every subsequent km. The Government had fixed the fare at Rs.14 for two km. At Tuesday’s meeting, representatives of some citizens’ groups suggested Rs.14 and some others Rs.20 as the minimum fare, Mr. Prabhakran told The Hindu after the meeting. But, the representatives said that the per km fare could be Rs.6 or Rs.7 and not Rs.10 that was demanded by the unions.
There were a lot of complaints of fleecing that the people attributed to the stand system. If an autorickshaw was hired from a particular stand, one had to pay for the empty return trip also because the drivers at the stand at the destination did not allow a non-member driver to pick up passengers from there. The fleecing across the district was done on the grounds of such empty return trips, the people said at the meeting.
The Kasturibai Ladies Association of Tatabad, one of the association that took part in the meeting, said in a press release that stand system should be abolished. None of the stands was authorised. A solution to the problem of fleecing lay in the removal of the stands, association secretary Mahalaxmi Subramaniam said. The citizens’ groups also wanted the pre-paid fare system to be re-introduced at the railway station and bus stands. A date for the meeting with the drivers and representatives of their unions would be fixed later.
