With Telangana elections around the corner, a cab driver has decided to fill up his candidature with a promise to launch a state-owned cab aggregator platform to go up against the likes of Ola and Uber.
Mukkawar Sunil, who is the president of Telangana Cabs Association, is reportedly planning to contest the upcoming Telangana Assembly Elections (December 7) from Quthbullapur constituency. According to TheNewsMinute, Sunil has promised to develop Telangana’s own cab aggregator service, which will provide best fair of Rs 18 per km.
Sunil says that he will pitch the government to develop their own app that would give the drivers Rs 18 per km in accordance with the RTA rules.
Cab aggregators Uber and Ola are seeing daily protests against the commission sharing system. Sunil has taken the issue as his election campaign. He says Uber and Ola promises drivers Rs 1 lakh per month, but in reality, they are not even able to make Rs 15,000 by the end of the month. And because of that they have documented around 30 suicides of cab drivers due to loans.
“In the last three years, we organized several protests against Ola and Uber which yielded no results. Even after representations to the government, they paid no heed to our concerns. Hence, I decided to join politics and become their representative,” Sunil told TNM.
Recently, hundreds of drivers from Ola and Uber participated in an indefinite strike in Mumbai, Delhi and other cities to protest against falling incentives and income. About 50 to 80 percent of cabs reportedly remained off roads.
The reason behind these protests is that fuel prices in India have risen over 20 percent over the past one year, however, Uber and Ola fares didn’t change. Also, the incentives for drivers have dropped from 24 percent last year to 15 percent on gross booking value.
