With the recent incident that unfolded a whole case of irregularities in the way Cab services in India operate, it has become critical for important for the Government to set down basic guidelines for the Cab Operations and bring it under organized sector.
Currently, there is no defined requirement for anyone to own a cab service. There is a strong requirement to drive following improvements –
- Ensure that every cab has a GPS unit fixed into it to help track where the cab is
- Ensure that every cab has a CCTV camera installed reporting the incidents inside the cab live to the Police Control Room or any other central location for that city. These CCTV footage need to be securely stored
- Every Cab should have a distress call button that should immediately raise alarms with the Cab Service provider, Police Control room as well as the nearest surveillance unit
- Ensure that every cab undergoes re-certification for the above units every 3 months
- Ensure that if any cab is not reporting onto the GPS map as well as camera console and distress call button is not working, the cab is declared unfit for operations.
These are just a few pointers that would help thwart the issues as we have witnessed in case of Uber. There may be many more that can be explored to help ensure safety of the travelers and government as well as the cab operators have to not just evaluate, but enforce these steps.
Additionally, it needs to be noted that the cab services need to be more diligent with following steps:
- Conduct Independent Background Verification of the Cab Drivers they employ
- Conduct immediate review of all the complain received with a turn around time of 16 working hours.
- Immediate action needs to be taken to revoke duty of the driver against whom a complain has been received. This revocation may be turned over in case Driver is identified Not Guilty
- Report all incidents of serious nature to the nearest Police Station to ensure that the Driver if guilty is reported to Law and appropriate action may be taken against erring driver
If the above steps are taken and if the cab companies also conduct due diligence for the women safety measures, I would presume that there would be a sharp decline in the overall issue from cab services perspective and where cabs could be probable point of abuse. It would only the time that would tell how much success would these measures see for this also would need to see honest and fair job delivery by the reviewers without resorting to corruption practices…
