manoj

Graveyard shifts, fine for each time they miss a drop/pick-up deadline, no quality checks during recruitment — join the dots, and you’ll find a picture linking rash driving to call centre cabbies. Their latest victims were two brothers studying in a Kendriya Vidyalaya school. While the elder died soon after the accident on Monday last, the younger died after being on a ventilator for a week. The Gurgaon police has started a on-the-spot fine drive to rein in these speed devils, but are they doing enough?

Over the last one week, the Gurgaon police claims, it has challaned 24 call centre vehicles for flouting the Motor Vehicles Act.

As Gurgaon SSP Hanif Qureshi says: ‘‘We have started slapping cash challans on the spot. As such we have a dedicated traffic wing, but for effective implementation, we have empowered the DSPs to challan such vehicles.’’ But interestingly, the Gurgaon police is not using the two Doppler radars and one traffic interceptor available with the traffic police to intercept violators. And while speed should be their main concern, the cops are strangely focussing more on the misuse of vehicles, such as on ferrying of too many passengers. Gurgaon inspectorgeneral of police Mahendra Lal had an explanation for this: ‘‘First, we are focusing on clearing the traffic congestion. Then, we will start a public awareness campaign, and after that take punitive action against the violators.’’ The only forward-looking step has been to ask call centre owners to get their drivers verified. ‘‘Some of the major BPOs have responded well. But we wish more would submit their drivers’ records,’’ Qureshi said. After the murder of a woman employee of a Bangalore call centre by the driver of her pick-up vehicle in January this year, leading BPO agencies in Gurgaon had agreed to the following:

• Speed governors and vehicle tracking systems in their cabs
• Pre-employment screening of all drivers by sharing records with the police
• Drive against rash and drunken driving
• Mandatory training of cab drivers

But in practice, not many BPOs have adhered to the rules. Insiders say managing transport system of BPOs in Gurgaon is a mammoth task — there are 150-odd BPOs and about 70,000 employees taking these cabs. ‘‘The industry is more concerned about its employees and we are taking all possible steps to make these cabs safe. Some of the call centres have made it mandatory for transporters to get speed governors installed in their cabs,’’ said Deepak Kapoor of Call Centre Association of India.

The main cause of overspeeding, he says, is the urge to pack the maximum number of trips in a day. ‘‘We are aware of this problem. So, we have made it clear how many trips a certain vehicle can make at our call centre. But then, you don’t know whether they send the same vehicle to some other call centre,’’ says Sandeep Soni, senior vicepresident of Sparsh BPO Services Ltd.

Soni adds that they have also reduced the number of cabs for ferrying employees and started using buses. ‘‘Buses are comparatively safer and it’s also economic,’’ he explains.

Cab drivers, on their part, blame the work pressure for overspeeding. ‘‘It’s almost like a 24-hour job. You have to drop executives and pick them up from areas like Rohini, Ghaziabad and Noida. If we are late, our salary is deducted. So, we are left with no option but to speed,’’ says Ritesh Yadav. He adds many a times, he has to fill in for an absentee driver during the second shift.

Traffic experts agree that the pressure on drivers is tremendous, for the simple reason that their employers are only concerned about maximising profits. ‘‘When we started training call centre cab drivers, we were surprised that majority of them had no formal training, and they were driving for almost 16 hours a day. They have been mostly picked up from rural areas. Studies all over the world have shown that fatigue leads to maximum accidents, and no one is trying to address this concern,’’ says Girish Kukreti of the Indian Road Traffic Education (IRTE). Blaming transport providers and managers, Kukreti adds: ‘‘They do not carry out any kind of study on how much time a cab would take to reach a certain spot and return to the workplace.’’ This mounts pressure on the driver to reach a destination in time, and he resorts to overspeeding.

Traffic experts say there’s a gadget to solve the entire problem. In fact, some leading MNCs have already installed video data recorder (VDR) in their vehicles which records acceleration, deceleration and driving pattern of the driver. ‘‘This helps to keep a check on the behaviour pattern of the driver and the vehicle becomes accessible. To save lives, BPOs should install such devices in their vehicles,’’ says Kukreti.

Source: http://epaper.timesofindia.com (Delhi Edition)
Date Of Publish: 07-Oct-06

__________________
Nothing is fool-proof to a talented fool.

kavita

I think some physical punishment on the spot is also necessary for guilty drivers.

motorbike

From my point of view fine must...If there is no option then cancellation of his/her driving license like that...