Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

Maxicab strike triggers traffic snarls in front of some schools

Sandhya Soman and Meera Srinivasan

Parents forced to drop children in the absence of regular transport

PILE-UP NEAR SCHOOLS: A large number of two-wheelers crowd the gate of a school at Gandhinagar, Adyar on Wednesday morning. — PHOTO: N. SRIDHARAN

Sandhya Soman and

Meera Srinivasan

CHENNAI: The strike called on Wednesday by some operators plying maxicabs to transport school children created traffic snarls in front of a few schools in parts of the city, particularly south Chennai.

The three-day strike was called by a few operators who alleged that transport and police officials were coming down heavily on them on charges of overloading. The action, they claimed, intensified after school education minister Thangam Thennarasu held a meeting with officials to increase road safety for school children.

Though many schools run their own fleet of vehicles to transport students, a few of them hire services of private maxicab operators. Schools such as Sri Sankara Senior Secondary School in Adyar, which primarily engages private operators, faced traffic bottlenecks on Wednesday morning. The road to the school was crammed with cars and two-wheelers of parents anxious to drop their wards on time.

"We had 25 cars bringing in children in place of one van that would have usually dropped those students," said vice-principal Kamala Viswanthan.

At AMM Matriculation in Kotturpuram, the problem was not as bad since the number of students commuting by private maxicabs was less.

Most of the students use school vans, and the others are dropped by their parents. Since only a few children using maxicabs had to seek other means of transport, there were not many latecomers, according to a school official.

More to join strike?

A few more operators have claimed that they are mobilising support, including that of autorickshaw operators, to strike work on Friday.

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