Hyderabad old city dwellers crib over cab services

Hyderabad: Come heavy rains in the cosmopolitan city, people dwelling in the interior areas in Old city will be at the receiving end. They are denied transportation facility as the private cab services operating through App technology are rejecting bookings from these customers.

While cab operators maintained that water logging and traffic congestion was the main reason for avoiding their services, locals complain they are stranded hours together due to lack of public and also private transportation facility during heavy rains in the city.

Many people in interior parts of old city find it difficult to book cabs in time. Almost all cabs and service providers are readily available for rides up to Charminar and other tourist spots near it but they avoid calls from internal areas.

However, online bookings for auto rickshaws are not declined all the time. Many people from interiors complained that App based cabs avoided their attempts to book cabs on many occasions.

Faheemuddin, a designer from Dabeerpura said that he had tried to book a cab through mobile App a few days ago but in vain. ``I had to go by public transport bus on the day and got late for the important work,’’ he said. Moreover, it becomes very difficult when it rains. No cab can be booked for many parts of old city during rains. Laiq Ahmed from Misri Ganj said that he often uses cabs to travel across the city.

He said, ``App based service providers generally fail to provide vehicles during rains. Either I have to wait for long or I have to drop my ride. It happened many a times.” Generally, cab service providers offer cabs of different vehicles starting from mini car, sharing car and large cars besides few offering auto rickshaws as well.

Srinivas, a cab driver with a popular app based transport provider said that rides in the interior parts were generally avoided following the bad roads and other issues.

He said, “Most of the calls from interiors are not accepted since there are no proper roads, fear of being stuck in traffic or being delayed. We have to look for many things before we accept calls from some areas.”

In many cases people in old city opt for local trains to travel to the distant places when the weather is not good or denied a call by the cabs.