People are so much habituated to cab services that a mere unavailability in their personal vehicles or autos is now directly leading them to book a cab and hit the destination. Since a couple of months, rapid strikes were noticed throughout the popular cities in Northern and Southern parts of India.
The vital reason behind these strikes is the lack of satisfactory payment.
Especially the drivers regarding the southern states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana are planning a joint strike on February 15 to protest against reduced earnings.
When asked about the precise cause of the strike, Tanveer Pasha, President of the Uber, TaxiForSure and Ola (UTO) Drivers and Owners Association has said:
“We have spoken to them (refers to rivers from Telangana and Tamil Nadu) and have agreed on February 15 to go on a joint strike. We are protesting for the same issue — reduced earnings because they have cut incentives and fares.”
The protests in Hyderabad and Bengaluru are quite crucial that they play a major role in holding the market for tax aggregators throughout India.
Both the giant cab companies Uber and Ola used to give fair incentives to its drivers at the beginning. However, may be due to heavy competition between both the companies, they moved over leaving their drivers incentiveless.
The sudden downfall in income of the drivers is considered as the reason behind the outburst, drivers used to earn Rs 80,000 to Rs 1,00,000 in the beginning. Now, their income has come down to Rs 20,000 to Rs 40,000.
Explaining their problems, drivers said that their companies had promised them high earnings compelling them to buy cabs on EMI, but with earnings dropping by more than half they are unable to pay back their monthly instalments.
“I have spoken to drivers in Delhi and they are protesting for the same reasons. If they do not listen to us after our strike on February 15, we are planning an all-India strike and get Uber and Ola banned in the whole country,” added Pasha.
Contrary to this, the newly introduced share services in cabs is not allowed according to legal norms. The respective state authorities has already passed the notices to both the companies, they mentioned February 18 as the deadline to either push for the change to be made in the law or stop the services in the city of Bengaluru.
Though Chennai and Hyderabad are among the top cities for both firms, Bengaluru ranks first with more than 100,000 cabs throughout the city.