Call centre cabs spell danger

Cars ferrying late-shift workers home drive recklessly through the night

Delhi’s cab drivers, paticularly those who drop call centre employees home in the small hours of the day, are notorious for rash driving. The cabbies argue that this is because they are overworked.

“Why does everyone blame the cabbies? Can’t they understand we also work under pressure? Our offices have fixed tight schedules for every trip. We have to reach office by the scheduled time or our salaries get deducted,” says Ramcharan Yadav, a cab driver who works with an MNC in Gurgaon.

The multinational companies, mostly international call centres which work round the clock, hire travel agencies for pick-and-drop services. The services run 24x7 and the cab are asked to make more trips than they should.

The travel agencies, however, claim that the drivers are are paid overtime and they desperately want to work after their shifts to earn extra money.

“It’s not true that we force them to work. We own the cabs and we will definitely not want the drivers to meet with an accident. After they complete their shifts, we ask them to leave or take rest at the restrooms provided by the company, but they insists working overtime to earn extra money, and if something happens, they blame the travel agency,” says Gurucharan Singh, a cab agency owner on Barakhamba Road.

In this blame game, company employees and people on the streets suffer.

“Once we had to ask the driver to stop the cab and take a nap for 15-20 minutes as he was sleeping while driving a fully packed car. He told us that his shift was over but the company forced him to work as  replacement for a driver who fell sick. In the middle of the night with some female colleagues in our cab, we had to wait for half an hour at an isolated area near Dhaula Kuan,” says Surender Singh Rathore, a resident of Janakpuri, who works at a call centre in Noida.

Other motorists also complain about the cab drivers.

“They don’t use indicators, they don’t follow traffic signals, they drive with one hand on the horn and they don’t feel anything if they hit someone. The cabbies are to blame for most of the accidents in the city.  Police must take strict action on these errant drivers,” says Kripal Singh, a resident of Mayur Vihar Phase-1.

The real problem surfaces in the night hours when very few policemen are on duty to enforce traffic rules.

“The cabbies become the kings of the roads in the night hours. Many traffic signals turn free after 11 in the night till early morning and this is the time when cabbies rule the streets. No traffic cops are there to stop them. There should be stricter traffic rules in the night hours also so that they don’t drive rashly,” says Vivek Chaudhary, a resident of Patparganj.

A police officer, however, argues: “There are many barricades put on various places in Delhi during the night hours which keep a regular check on such cabs. We are not able to deploy the workforce at night as most of them are busy controlling traffic during the day.”