Pre-paid auto stands to work 24x7

HYDERABAD: The six prepaid auto booths at the Secunderabad railway station will work round-the-clock, additional commissioner of police (traffic) CV Anand said on Friday. This decision, apart from several others, were taken during Friday’s review meeting of the system by the governing body headed by the ACP (traffic).“It has been decided to run all the six booth 24-hours. The contractors, KS Babu Rao & Sons, will have to deploy 18 operators, in three shifts," Anand said.Noting the request of the contractor to increase his fees as the present Rs 2, being collected from passengers, was not generating sufficient income, the committee decided to extend the 33.3 per cent contribution for three more months so that the round-the-clock system gets stabilised.According to the police, more than 1.23 lakh autos were used from both sides of the railway station under the pre-paid system since its launch three months ago.On an average more than 1,400 autos were hired by commuters each day.With the surveillance cameras installed at the booths, police have been able to detect eight cases of bag missing in autos.“In one case the auto driver took away 40 tola gold from the bag of a passenger and we could trace the auto driver and recover the stolen gold,” the police said.The representatives of the committee said that the increased sense of security has helped the pre-paid system become popular.On the demand from passengers to change the slab distance, the committee decided not to change it as the auto drivers had represented that with the hike in fuel prices the present slab fare was not profitable for them.“It was decided to display slab and tariff boards and complaint book at the six pre-paid booths for the convenience of the passengers,' Anand said.The Committee has decided to monitor the performance of the booths at the railway station for another three months before expanding the same to the Mahatma Gandhi Bus Stand (MGBS), Nampally railway station and other places.On its part, the South Central Railway decided to increase the announcements on its public address system on the platform about the availability of the pre-paid autos and also put up signboards on the foot over bridges and booking counters.

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