Inordinate delay in fare revision spawns unorganised metered autorickshaw groups in Tiruchi

TIRUCHI:

:

The inordinate delay in revision of autorickshaw fares has resulted in the emergence of a number of self-styled metered autorickshaw groups collecting arbitrarily fixed rates in the city.

According to a rough estimate, there are about 10,000 autorickshaws in Tiruchi district. Of them, about 7,000 ply in the city alone. The base fare, as per the Government tariff fixed in 2013, for a ride of two km is ₹25. If the passengers have to travel beyond two km, they have to pay ₹12 for every additional km.

While a section of auto drivers accepted the revised tariff, there were many complaints about the rest collecting abnormal charges. Though the Transport officials took efforts in the beginning to ensure that the drivers collected rates fixed by the government, they could not curb the practice.

A few years later, app-based Ola and UBER services came along. They lured many autorickshaw drivers by offering attractive schemes. Since the charges collected were cheap, many passengers preferred to use Ola and UBER services.

In order to sustain the patronage and face the competition, autorickshaws that were not part of the app-based services came up with the metered auto concept. They introduced a tariff rate of ₹40 for the first two km and ₹15 per additional km about a few years ago in Tiruchi. Though the tariff was against the directive of the Transport Department, they continued with the new tariff system.

The tariff has not been revised since 2013 in spite of numerous upward revisions of fuel prices. There were many protests for revision of tariffs. The absence of tariff revision has resulted in the emergence of many metered autorickshaw groups.