Tough times for 'Easy Auto'

Tough times for 'Easy Auto'
By Monica Jha, DH News Service, Bangalore:
The Easy Auto (EA) scheme, that was launched with great fanfare in the City, hit a rough patch early on. The final blow, perhaps, has come with its major patron - Bangalore City Traffic Police- disowning the scheme.

The Easy Auto (EA) scheme, that was launched with great fanfare in the City, hit a rough patch early on. The final blow, perhaps, has come with its major patron — Bangalore City Traffic Police — disowning the scheme.

EA is a call-auto service that co-ordinates between passengers and autorickshaw drivers through a call centre. It was launched by Internet World Wide in association with Bangalore City Traffic Police and the Regional Transport Authority as part of the B-TRAC project, on June 1 this year.

Deccan Herald did a reality check on functioning of the scheme and found that the Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) number (given on the EA website to book an auto) 98441 12233 was inactive for many days. If you did manage get the welcome message and initial instructions, it returned to an engaged tone. The SMSs didn’t get a response and online efforts through www.easyauto. also were in vain .

Even the contact numbers of Internet World Wide (listed in Contact Us page of the EA website) 98440 43300 and 98440 42200 were of no use. While the first one was switched off, incoming calls were barred on the second.

EA take
Padmasree H Sundaram,CEO of Internet World Wide, said they’ve been able to provide call-auto service to only a few customers. “For the last two weeks, the system has not been working properly due to some disruption but around 80 passengers avail of our services for pick-up and drop at a fixed time on a contract basis. For EA operations to be successful, we need at least 500 autorickshaws registered with us but, we have only 125,” she said. At the time of launch, EA planned to have 1,500 Easy Auto stands but has none so far, she added. “We have finished all paper work and have even got a license from the RTA”, she said.

She blamed the traffic police for EA’s poor functioning. “The traffic police do not co-operate with us,” she alleged and added that though EA operates independently, it was started as part of B-TRAC.

Police version
“EA was never a part of B-TRAC,” said K C Ramamurthy, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Bangalore. The notification from the Transport Department clears the role of the traffic police only to verify the documents of the autorickshaw drivers registered with EA and there was no delay in that process, he said However, a senior police official, who was instrumental in the launch of Easy Auto, admitted that it was launched as part of B-TRAC. The homepage of the official website of B-TRAC has a link to Easy Auto website.

Ramamurthy emphasised, “We can’t persuade autorickshaw drivers to join EA as it’s a private, profit-making venture. Only one autorickshaw drivers’ union showed interest in joining the network. It should have been a public scheme; why should any government agency promote someone’s business?” he asked.

Padmashree, however, countered the argument. “We’ve been putting money from our pockets to keep the scheme alive. Even collecting Rs three per customer as service charge is difficult.”

Meanwhile Ramamurthy is planning to request the Deputy Commissioner to call a meeting of stakeholders for a review and discussion on plans of improvement of EA.