Tie-up with radio cab facing roadblocks

CHANDIGARH: Looking for a radio-cab to drive you home after late night partying and a few drinks? Well, you may not be able to find one immediately.
Chandigarh hospitality association’s (CHA) spirited move to help drunken people by going for tie-ups with one of the two existing radio cab operators can face roadblocks ahead due to unavailability of sufficient number of vehicles.
Compared to minimum 250 radio cabs’ available across Tricity round-the-clock, the city has only 115 cabs left to move on the roads to cater to the large numbers of commuters, including drunken people.
With a capacity of 72 cabs, Mega Cabs manager, Arvind Kumar, said, ‘‘This number is very less to provide prompt and timely cab service to drunken people after late-night drinking sessions. But if the administration accepts our long-standing request to hike the cab fares, we can buy more vehicles to accommodate more clients.’’
However, other radio cab operator, Tricity Tours and Travels’ manager, H S Mann said they have been providing night cabs to drunken boys and girls for long and a high number of their cabs’ night booking is being done for these people, especially on weekends.
‘‘But the number of our cabs being just 43 is definitely going to disturb our plans to provide drivers to take home cars of drunken people. We too are ready to buy more cars provided the rates of cabs are revised shortly,’’ said Mann. In absence of revised rates, the radio-cab owners claimed to be helpless in terms of shortage of
vehicles.
On the other hand, Chandigarh hospitality associations’ general secretary and owner of a Sector-35 hotel, Ankit Gupta said, ‘‘We are not aware of the shortage of radio cabs to make our concept of providing immediate cabs to the inebriated people at nights successful. We are just going ahead with our plans and publicising the details of this noble move.” He further suggested, “Maybe, the administration can give permits to more vehicles to run on this special night service to help out the drunken people safely back home.’’