HYDERABAD: At a time when Telangana Cab owners and Drivers’ Association is unhappy with the policies of Uber and Ola cab operators, state minorities finance corporation has decided to implement ‘driver empowerment programme’ with the help of the Uber cab services to provide new cars to eligible drivers belonging to minority sections of the society.
The scheme, which is aimed at making the drivers become the owners of the cab they drive, will provide financial assistance to each driver, besides lending them placement assistance with the help of Uber. This means, the corporation will provide financial assistance to each driver, who is trained under the programme, to buy a new car so as to run it as a taxi by placing it with the Uber Cab services.
Meanwhile, this proposal has been vehemently opposed by the Telangana Cab owners and Drivers’ Association. The association leaders argued that the drivers, who had earlier purchased new vehicles on finances on heavy interest rates were badly hit after the Uber and Ola managements registering new cars with them.
These operators are giving more booking calls to the new drivers, who take cars on the cab-leasing programme by Uber and Ola, ignoring the cab owners who had already kept their car with their from the beginning. This is resulting in low earnings of the cab owners, who had kept their cars with the company.
“The drivers-cum-owners are unable to even pay the loan interest on time. As the city has more cabs than the required number, particularly with the taxi aggregators such as Uber and Ola, inadequate bookings have become the order of the day. Because of less number of bookings, cab drivers are earning meagre income,” said Shiva Vulkundakar, president of the association. Allowing the cab operators to keep more vehicles with them will make the lives of existing cab owners miserable. He urged the state government to prevail upon the TS minorities finance corporation not to finance new vehicles to be kept with the cab operators, he added.