While several commuters were hit owing to the autorickshaw strike, the worst affected were probably students who were racing against time to reach schools on time as the auto drivers who regularly ply them to school were on strike.
Traffic snarls were witnessed outside many schools in the city as, parents said, there were a couple of cars for every auto that stayed off the road. Several parents transported their children on two-wheelers.
Komathi R., a parent of an eighth standard student of a private school, Jayashree R., said that she had to skip the first day of her school as the autos were on strike. “My husband had to rush to office and I was unable to drop her, so we decided not to send her to school. She is very upset as she was unable to collect her answer scripts of her first term exams,” she added.
Another parent, Malvika S., a software engineer, said that she had to leave early from work to pick her daughter, Ashana, studying in Class 10. “I was able to drop her to school, but picking was a problem as I was at work. I had to leave work early and pick her up as she is very stressed out about her preparatory exams that will begin from Tuesday,” Ms. Malvika added.
Anwar Pasha, an auto driver who ferries students from R.T. Nagar to Bishop Cotton Girls School, said that five of his autos ferry 22 students, all of whom were affected because of the strike. “Students were worst affected because of the strike. We wanted to participate in the strike as our livelihoods are at stake, we were hoping that our unions would at least allow us to drop students to schools. But we decided to suspend our services as we wanted to avoid untoward incidents as the students security was our concern,” he added.
