Belagavi: With the entry of
Ola, many commuters in the city hoped that their days of coughing up excess fare will be over. This was not to be as autorickshaw drivers, who are still do not follow the deputy commissioner’s order on mandatory meter, allegedly started threatening drivers of the taxi-hailing service.
Many commuters have been inconvenienced as Ola drivers cancel bookings after being harassed by autorickshaw drivers. Though some netizens raised the issue on Twitter and Facebook, there seems no respite.
A recent
tweet by Vinayak Bhosale detailed an incident when an Ola driver refused providing him service from CBT Bus Stand due to the fear of harassment by autorickshaw drivers. “Later he asked to come some 200 meters away from bus stop. OLA driver told me even DC, SP, RTO none are helping OLA (sic),” he tweeted.
To avoid being harassed by autorickshaw drivers, Ola drivers call the passengers 200-300m from the bus stand, said Bhosale. “The same thing happens at Ramdev and the railway station,” he said. Recalling a similar incident, R C Akshata said an Ola driver asked her to come 100m from autorickshaw stand. “I had to take Ola since I was with 2 family members with so many luggages. Can anyone help on this (sic),” she tweeted.
Vinayak further tweeted that on a late night, some Malaysian girls had booked Ola near Yellur, but the autorickshaw drivers did not let them board the taxi.
Many such netizens have aired their grievances via tweets mentioning police officials. DCP (law and order) Seema Latkar a reply suggested the complainants to contact the DCP (traffic and crime), sharing the latter’s contact number. Uday Kinjawadekar, a blogger who runs the Facebook page “Belgaum Mein Auto ka Meter Down karo”, told TOI that the authorities need to take concrete decisions to control the menace of autorickshaw drivers.
