The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : 4,436 more autos forced to recalibrate meters

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jun 01, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

4,436 more autos forced to recalibrate meters

Staff Reporter

78.5% of autorickshaws in city have recalibrated meters

CHENNAI : The intensive checks carried out by the Regional Transport Authorities since May 21 has forced 4,436 autorickshaw owners to recalibrate their meters to the revised tariff, according to a press release issued by the Regional Transport Authority on Thursday.

Joint Transport Commissioner K. Yogarajan said the total number of autorickshaws with meters recalibrated to the revised rate — of Rs.14 for the first two kilometres and Rs.6 for every subsequent km — had increased from 31,258 on May 21 to 35,694 on Thursday. Now, 78.5 per cent of all autorickshaws in the city had recalibrated their meters. There are approximately 45,000 autorickshaws in the city.

Regional Transport Officers have been carrying out surprise checks on the vehicles, following a meeting organised by the Transport Commissioner with autorickshaw driver unions on May 19. The officials informed autorickshaw driver unions of the checks following widespread complaints from the public about drivers not using meters and charging well above the revised tariff.

Since May 22, the regional transport authorities had checked around 7,502 vehicles and had impounded 838 vehicles. Of them, 475 vehicles were impounded for non-recalibration of meters, 208 for not having officially sealed the meters after recalibration and 155 vehicles for not officially engaging the meters. The

Compounding fee

Transport Department had derived a compounding fee to the tune of Rs.3.5 lakh due to the checks.

The press release said the surprise checks would continue and asked the drivers and owners of vehicles to recalibrate their meters voluntarily. Transport authorities have also warned that the licences of drivers of vehicles with uncalibrated meters were being photocopied and maintained in a `black list' registry.

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