Debate on how safe it is to allow autorickshaws to continue to ferry children to school.
A group of schoolchildren had a lucky escape when their autorickshaw rammed into a car in the city on Friday. Vice President of the Autorickshaw Drivers' Union, Srinivas Murthy and Director, Gubbi Labs, Dr. H. S. Sudhira debate whether it is safe to allow autorickshaws to continue to ferry children to school.
Impose rules, don’t ban autos
srinivas murty
Vice President of the Autorickshaw Drivers' Union
Imposing a ban on autorickshaws carrying school children is not a solution.In fact, it is not possible. Who can ban a service, which is doing nothing illegal? In the unlikely event of a ban, autorickshaw drivers will go to court and get a stay on it as they are providing a public service.Autorickshaws are contract carriages and parents voluntarily choose them from an array of options. Nobody can deny them this right.
A huge number of autorickshaws transport school children in Bengaluru. Often, they are the only affordable means of transport, as many schools charge Rs 2000 to Rs 3000 a month for using a school bus. The issue is not autos carrying schoolchildren, but the safety of the children they carry. This can be ensured by imposing certain restrictions on the way they are ferried.
Around 15 years ago, traffic police had laid down that an autorickshaw could carry six children below 10 years of age and four children if they were between 10 and 15 years old. Now, it is the responsibility of traffic police and policemen should be deployed near schools to keep a check.
Implementing this rule could raise the cost of travel. To work around this, many autorickshaws have installed planks in the seating area to increase seating capacity and comfortably accommodate eight to 10 small children. This does away with the substantial increase in the cost and seats children safely in the auto .
If safety issues persist, the traffic police should have a dialogue with autorickshaw drivers’ unions and arrive at a workable solution.
Rickshaws:?The disorganised sector
Dr. H. S. Sudhira
Director, Gubbi Labs
Given their ability to make short trips even through narrow lanes and ferry three passengers at a go, autorickshaws are an excellent alternative for ferrying students. They are perhaps one of the key innovations on Indian streets and are categorised as 'para-transit' in urban transportation paradigm. This is recognised by the National Urban Transport Policy too.
But what is required are new systems to improve this mode of transport. To begin with there must be a way of ensuring that this seemingly unorganized sector is organized. Can cooperatives or any other mode of organisation give the sector a boost? Should the government come up with innovative methods to see it is organised better and provides more efficient service at affordable fares?
It is important for the key stakeholders to sit across the table and draw up necessary guidelines for the sector. Given the advantage of autorickshaws, if these changes are brought in they could be the most preferred mode of transport.
( Source : dc )
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