Cab unions decide to play it hard against errant cabbies

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">The phones at the control room of one of the city''s taxi unions, instituted a few months back to register complaints against errant drivers, are ringing more frequently. And the Lalbazar traffic control is also getting more such complaints by the day. <br /><br />According to the unions, cases of taxi drivers misbehaving with passengers have gone up by 70-80 calls per day over the last six months, a steep rise from the meagre 20 complaints it got before that.<br /><br />But simply calling up isn''t enough it seems. Bengal Taxi Association''s president Bimal Guha said, "Passengers should put in a complaint letter to the public vehicles department with a copy to the taxi union for immediate and strict action."<br /><br />The range of complaints are diverse in nature and vary from rude behaviour to foul language or even smoking in the cab. "Not only drivers behave rudely, they often don''t know the roads themselves, smoke inside the taxi without the passenger''s permission or even misbehave with women passengers," said Madan Mitra, secretary of Progressive Taximens'' Union. <br /><br />Reasons abound as to why such instances have been on the rise. Both taxi unions and cops allege that most of the drivers hit the road after procuring a licence in as early as seven days. "As a result they don''t know the city well and don''t respect the city''s culture," said Mitra. However, assistant director (licence), Public Vehicles Department, Ujjal Kumar Sengupta said, "When we issue cab licenses, the drivers not only have to clear written tests but also oral tests on the roads of the city. Only if they clear both, are they given a licence. But I am not sure about the procedure in the other regional transport offices."<br /><br />The taxi unions have now decided to work in tandem with the police to track down the errant cabbies quickly once they get a passenger complaint. In such cases, either the membership of the taxi driver gets suspended or he is asked to apologise to the passenger depending on the nature of the offence. <br /><br />"When we get such cases, we usually call the owner alongwith the driver and either give them a warning or levy a fine. We also deal with cases of drivers refusing passengers very seriously and mark the licence of the driver. If the licence is marked a few times, we even suspend it at times as penalty," said DC Traffic (II), SK Mitra. <br /><span style="" font-style:="" italic="">madhurima.nandy@timesgroup.com</span></div> </div>