Indo-Asian News Service, Panaji, Jan 8: India’s first all-women tourism taxi service, flagged off three months ago in Goa, has hit a roadblock.
A Church-operated NGO, Centre for Responsible Tourism (CRT), Thursday said that contrary to public knowledge, a private company was running the cab service and that the women drivers were being allegedly forced to drive at night with male passengers without any security.
CRT blamed the Goa Tourism Development Corp (GTDC) for the “scam and sham”.
According to Fr. Maverick Fernandes, who heads Caritas (under which CRT functions), the social and charitable wing of the influential Roman Catholic Church in Goa, the 10 women taxi drivers roped in to drive the radio-taxi fleet were not even trained in basic martial arts.
GTDC launched the cab service in October last year.
“The GTDC has been lying all along. About martial arts, about the taxi service being run by the corporation, about salaries and their rules about ferrying women clients,” Fernandes told a press conference.
“Instead of making them entrepreneurs as they had claimed, they have opened doors for private taxi operators and made the women employees,” he said.
Rita Vaz, one of the women drivers said, “We do not feel safe on the roads at night. The emergency buttons provided in the car do not work and the GPS tracking service stops after 7 p.m.”
Goa is one of the leading beach tourism destinations in India and attracts nearly three million tourists annually.