The one-day strike call given by the Coimbatore District Autorickshaw Workers’ All Association Joint Action Committee on Tuesday, seeking revision of newly fixed fare, evoked poor response. Eighty-one drivers participated in the demonstration and blocked the road for a few minutes. They were removed by the police.
The demonstrators wanted the government’s minimum fare of Rs. 25 for the first 1.8 km be revised to Rs. 30 for 1.5 km and the fare per kilometre raised to Rs. 15 from Rs. 12 fixed for the city.
Drivers who did not participate in the strike claimed that they did not want schoolchildren to suffer if they went off roads on a working day.
But, this does not mean that the other autorickshaw drivers who stood in the nearby stands and watched the protestors did not want the fare to be revised.
Representatives of the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam trade union too expressed the need for revising the fare.
They strongly felt that the fare implemented in Chennai was not feasible in Coimbatore.
“The main reason is that the demand for autorickshaws is more in the State’s capital. This is primarily because there are no private town buses there. On the other hand the distance between two stops ranges between two and four km,” M. Sarbuthen (45), a trade union leader from Town Hall, said.
He added that due to these reasons many passengers hired autorickshaws for shorter distances too.
“In our city we have too many bus stops. For a distance of about 1.5 km from Ukkadam to the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital or Ukkadam to Railway Junction there are five bus stops,” he said.
“There are too many private buses that ply at regular intervals in the city. While their seating capacity is around 50, these buses are jam-packed with about 120 passengers during peak hours,” driver H. Shahul Hameed said.
These factors have certainly brought down the patronage for autorickshaws numbering more than 11,000 in the city, the drivers said.