CHENNAI: Following a surge in complaints, the Chennai police have begun a drive to book autorickshaw drivers who fleece passengers and commit other traffic offences. On Wednesday, 959 cases were registered. "The auto drivers were sensitized to follow all the rules and regulations scrupulously. The drive will continue in the next coming days," said city police commissioner Shankar Jiwal.
Besides overcharging, the police pensalised drivers who did not wear uniforms, overloaded their vehicles with passengers, refused to ply or drove while drunk.
This has irked auto drivers, who have been pressing for fare revision. The last time autorickshaw fares were revised was in 2013 when diesel sold for less than ₹75 per litre. Since then, even government bus fares have been revised.
As per the existing fare slab, autorickshawss can collect only ₹25 as base fare for the first 1.8 km and ₹12 for every km thereafter. Drivers say that they would incur losses if they followed this 'outdated' rate card.
S Balasubramaniam, state president of CITU's autorickshaw wing, said, "Even aggregators such as Ola and Uber do not follow the government fare chart and collect excess fare from the public. But the police are penalising only ordinary autorickshaw drivers, who mostly belong to economically weaker sections in the society." Instead of spending time on collecting fines, the government can create its own mobile app for autorickshaws in Chennai. Through this, it can generate enough revenue in the form of taxes, said Balasubramanian.
Transportation activist R Rengachari said, "Such special drivers are nothing but mere eyewash. Everybody knows that not a single autorickshaw driver follows the government rate and most of them don't even have an active fare meter." If the government was keen on this aspect, it could have long ago implemented the GPS-based fare metre project, Rengachari said. The project, which was announced in 2013 for 43,000 Chennai autorickshaws, aimed at generating printed receipts at the end of every journey based on the distance travelled. It has gone into a limbo after a pilot project in Anna Nagar.
