Auto-rickshaw menace continues, HC directions go up in smoke

Neeraj Bagga

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, June 18

Menace of auto-rickshaws continues to haunt residents on the popular and congested roads in the city. Balram Kumar Sharma, president, Punjab Sudhar Sabha said the authorities must make a norm for taxi drivers to drive their vehicles in a queue. He elaborated that it would provide others vehicles equal opportunity and space on roads to drive ahead.

He asked the auto drivers to strictly avoid picking up and dropping passengers on the middle of the road. Amidst a variety of vehicles plying on the city roads, auto-rickshaws have been found to be creating major traffic bottlenecks.

Operators of these auto-rickshaws continue to flout traffic norms, including transport laws as well as the high court directions, to limit the number of passengers and even school children in an auto-rickshaw.

Ravinder Singh, a resident of Basant Avenue, said overloaded auto-rickshaws are driven by underage, inexperienced drivers. “To maximise their profits, a section of them resort to use kerosene as fuel, which adds to environmental pollution in the city,” he said.

The herculean task of managing the auto-rickshaw menace was initiated by the government departments concerned several times in the past, but it yielded little results. Political parties come to their rescue and help them to scuttle the police department’s drive against them. Though Amritsar City Transport Services Limited, an agency formed under the MC, in agreement with the APTP Ltd has promised to restrict illegal operation of para-transit (shared autos, other buses, etc) on the routes allocated to the city bus service, nothing was done in this regard.

Eventually, the private concern operating the City Bus Service pulled out of the agreement and the buses are gathering dust. Its officials blamed overloaded autos for their losses.

Kanwaljit Singh, Secretary, Regional Transport Authority (RTA) said those auto drivers flouting traffic norms were regularly challaned. He said two more CNG fuel stations were added in the city and equal number of LPG fuel stations were already functioning. He anticipated that gradually diesel-run autos would be phased out from city roads. In order to regularise the fare system of autos meter system would be installed, he added.