Chennai: Transportation was crippled on Wednesday as about 40,000 cab drivers affiliated to the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) went on strike, demanding the government to relax its eight-hour per day restriction order to the cab drivers and also asked them to introduce standard metres. They protested at Chepauk stadium and raised slogans to protect the livelihood of cab drivers.
Though the strike was called off in the evening, the commuters had to shell out extra money as the app-based cab aggregators surged their prices by three times due to low frequency.
Among the worse affected areas were Old Mahabalipuram Road (OMR), Central and Egmore railway stations, Koyambedu bus stop and the Chennai international airport.
“While OMR has cabs arriving every two minutes, today I had to wait for 15 minutes for the cab. Moreover, only share services were available and they charged more than an independent cab,” said P. Krishna at Tidel Park.
Also, there were hardly any cabs at the airport. The passengers had to depend on the metro rail and private cabs to commute from the airport.
According to one of the passengers, the private cab owners charged exorbitant charges for small trips and most of them were forced to walk outside the airport for a reasonably priced ride.
A few cab companies have also sent messages to their passengers to bear with the inconvenience caused due to increase in waiting time and assured normalcy by tomorrow.
