Meagre earning, no social security: Report highlights plight of truckers

Shubhadeep Choudhury
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, February 16

A recent World Bank report on traffic crash highlighted the plight of truck drivers and its social impact in India.

The report, released by Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari, said while 53 per cent of truck drivers earned “a meagre income of Rs 10,000-Rs 20,000 per month, 93 per cent did not get any social security benefits such as provident fund, pension, health insurance, life insurance or gratuity”.

Risky ride: Drivers comprise 10% of crash victims*

• 53% of truck drivers’ income is meagre
• 93% do not have any social security
• 15,000 truck drivers die in mishaps annually (Figures for 2018)

Quoting figures compiled by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways in 2018, the report said of the 1.5 lakh people killed in road crashes in the country, 15,000 (10 per cent) were truck drivers. Trucks were involved in over 57,000 crashes during this period.

According to the report, one of the biggest challenges in claiming compensation after a crash for truck drivers has been under-reporting of the incident and non filing of FIRs. Overall, about two-thirds (66 per cent) of the 420 truck drivers surveyed for the study hadn’t filed an FIR after the crash.

The study noted that despite having a high rate of crashes and resultant injuries, it was found that none of the respondent truck drivers had applied or benefited from any government-run scheme for compensation. They had neither laid claim to or benefited from any government scheme like cashless treatment at hospitals, solatium fund for hit-and-run cases, or any other ex-gratia schemes at the central or state level. “The process of claiming insurance is fraught with challenges for vulnerable groups like truck drivers who often hail from LIH (lower income households) and disadvantaged sections of society,” the study observed. Only 40 per cent of the drivers were found to have life insurance.