On Tuesday, the taxi and rickshaw drivers of Bengaluru conducted 11th-day funeral rites for the Karnataka state government’s false promises of compensation.
The Karnataka government had announced a compensation of Rs. 5,000 to each driver because of the loss of work during the COVID-19 pandemic. The drivers are miffed that the move has not been initiated yet. In order to protest this, the drivers held funeral rites for the unfulfilled promise that was made 11 days ago.
The President of the Ola Uber Drivers and Owners’ Association Tanveer Pasha led the protests and said,
“More than 10 days after announcing the Rs. 5,000 compensation for drivers, there are no forecasts for when we will receive this. So, our auto and taxi driver associations are doing 11th-day rites of this government’s false declaration.”
On Monday, another section of drivers held protests outside the office of Transport Commissioner. The one-time compensation of 5,000 rupees was announced by the Chief Minister of Karnataka on May 6 as part of 1,610 crore compensation package COVID-19 relief. The package promised compensation for 7.75 lakh auto and taxi drivers.
The process to start soon says Transport Department
After a media agency reached out to the Transport department regarding the same, the department confirmed that it is yet to initiate the registration process for the compensation. A registration process will be set up in the existing Seva Sindhu portal where the drivers are required to enroll themselves. The Additional Transport Commissioner Hemanth Kumar hopes that the drivers can start registering themselves by this week. He said,
“We are going to test it tomorrow. Most of the work for the drivers’ application section has been made ready. But we are facing some glitches with our network here. If all goes well, we can go live by day after tomorrow as well.”
The drivers, on the other hand, are not hopeful of receiving the promised compensation amount. Narayan Swamy, the President of Adarsh Auto Driver Union said that neither they nor their colleagues have gotten a single rupee from the government. Tanveer said,
“We know that this government is not going to give Rs 5,000 to our drivers which are declared by the Chief Minister of Karnataka. But we will fight and protest.”
Source: The News Minute
