Chennai taxis now face the issue of poor patronage, over 20,000 call taxis to get phased out
Posted on: 28/Nov/2020 9:10:11 AM
Call taxis are available now, but are there enough customers?
After the lockdown was relaxed, the TN government allowed the taxi services to resume once again.
It is now said that the demand for the taxis after the lockdown continues to remain at 30% to 40% only. This has resulted in lots of financial issues for the taxi drivers and their families.
A call taxi owner and driver revealed about how he hasn’t yet got many travel requests from airports, railway stations, hotels, malls etc. Many IT professionals depend on the call taxis in Chennai. The driver was of the view that if the IT professionals continue to work from home for another year then the number of call taxis on the roads would come down by half. This would create huge distress on the families of the call taxi drivers.
The deepavali season had resulted in an increase in the number of bookings in the first week of November. The situation has gone back again to how it was in the month of September. He mentioned that apart from Covid-19 infection the travel pattern has changed totally now.
In the past, professionals from the IT companies were responsible for 40percent of business of call taxis and the closure of these companies have brought huge financial loss for the call taxis business.
Information is that 45000 call taxis ply in Chennai city and out of those 32000 is operated through cab aggregators like Ola, Uber etc. Other companies like Fast track, NTL utilizes remaining taxis. Truth is that before the lockdown a call taxi driver earned Rs 3000 to Rs 3500 per day and now they earn just Rs 1000 to Rs 1200 per day.
It was brought to light by Mr Ramanujam, president of Thozargal Car Ottunargal Amaippu Sara Thozhirsangam that the average demand has come down to 35percent. If the situation persists then more than 20000 call taxis might get phased out soon from Chennai city. The monthly dues have been piling up and without work the drivers would struggle to pay their dues. This might force many drivers to leave the job also.
It must be recalled that just a week back about 10 call taxis were confiscated at Porur by a non banking financial institution due to non payment of the dues. The EMIs during the months of lockdown were not collected and inspite of this the drivers were unable to save money to pay their dues.
