Telangana: Ola, Uber driver stir total

Hyderabad: The Telangana Cab Drivers and Owners Association (TCDOA) said on Saturday that their strike was successful and around 80,000 drivers working for  Uber and Ola were off the road on Saturday. They said that since there was no response from the managements, they would be taking their protest to the next level from Sunday. The strike was certain to leave many revellers stranded, in view of the tough police checks against drunk driving on the city routes for the New Year’s eve, There an estimated 1 lakh drivers with Ola and Uber, of whom only about 20,000 were said to be working.

A driver who picked up a passenger late at night said he had been working non-stop since the morning, as most taxis were off the roads. Autorickshaw drivers made a quick buck as several users of the taxis had to switch over to three-wheelers. TCDOA state president Shiva Vulkundakar said that till Saturday they had not received any response from the two taxi cab company managements. “Despite the shutdown, they are least bothered to address our issue,” he said.

“From Sunday as a part of the protest, we will pull down all the commercial hoardings of Ola and Uber set up across the city for branding. We will increase the intensity phase wise if our issues are not addressed still.” Mr Shiva said. He alleged that the managements of the two companies had tampered with the software due to which the app was showing availability of cabs. That was not the case, he claimed. “More than 1,500 teams are working across the city to educate our members on the need for protest. We ourselves booked the cabs which were found available on the mobile apps and called them and explained them the reasons behind the protest.” Mr Shiva said.

He said that though customers were facing trouble, the drivers were fighting for the sake of their livelihood. He said that the association would not allow a single cab on the roads and the protest would continue  till January 4. Spokespersons of Ola and Uber were unavailable to comment on the issue. The association began a protest from Friday demanding that the managements stop more cabs from joining the fleet, in order to provide minimum bookings to existing cab drivers. The other demands included cancellation of share bookings or levy a higher tariff for the service. The association is demanding that the managements give guaranteed bookings up to 12 during peak hours for at least five years for each cab for the drivers to recover their investment.