City RTO is not issuing fitness certificates for autos whose owners missed the October 15 deadline for recalibrating meters
City RTO is not issuing fitness certificates for autos whose owners missed the October 15 deadline for recalibrating meters
With the two-month deadline for recalibrating the auto meters over on October 15, the Regional Transport Office (RTO) has stopped giving Fitness Certificates (FC) to autorickshaws that have not done so, as a reprimand. As per the chart, meters should display the minimum charge of Rs 17 instead of Rs 14, the earlier minimum fare.
|
| Dil maange more! Auto unions feel that the stipulated time was not sufficient. They have asked for an extension but haven't got any response from the government. File pic |
Lingaraju from Jayanagar RTO said, "We have stopped issuing FCs. There are hundreds of autorickshaws that have not been issued FCs since October 15 and the number is increasing every day. The auto drivers who have not recalibrated their meters are not supposed to charge fare as per the revised rates, as the deadline for recalibration is over." Which, in a way, means that the public should pay the fare as per the auto meter ufffd the conversion chart stands invalid.
Assistant Controller, Legal Metrology, ANT Unit, M Gopalappa said, "As on Monday, 52,750 autos have been recalibrated and we have certified and another 12,000 plus autos which have to recalibrate their meters. Yesterday, around 2,750 autos underwent the recalibration."
Auto unions feel that the stipulated time is not sufficient. "In the city there are around 50 people who are qualified to recalibrate a meter. It takes around two hours to recalibrate a manual meter,u00a0 whereas it takes about half an hour for a digital meter. We have asked for an extension, but so far we have not got any response yet," said M Manjunath, president, Adarsha Auto Union.
"With regard to the conversion of manual meter into digital meters we had requested the government to give a subsidy of Rs 2,000. They had agreed to pay Rs 1,000, but it is yet to be finalised," he added.
Jai Karnataka Auto Union President S Jayaram said, "The auto drivers were given enough time to recalibrate their meters but they have not done it, and now we can't ask for an extension. If we do so, we will be on the wrong side. Let the government teach them a lesson. Many of them neglected the deadline, hoping that they would get extension."
| Quick solution |
| When the auto fares were increased to Rs 17 from Rs 14 as minimum fare, there were many cases of people being duped by auto drivers, showing some fake conversion charts. Srikanth Seshadri, a city-based techie, found a solution by creating an application that will enable passengers to get the exact fare on java-enabled mobile phones. |
