No panic button or control room: Authorities want to ban Uber in Mumbai too

Adamance, thy name is Uber. The taxi hailing app, which has been chastised, criticised and punished by the authorities and the public over the last two months for being irresponsible, continues to carry on with the same attitude. And now, the Maharashtra transport department wants the state government to ban the app, says a report in The Times of India. According to the officials cited in the report, the company has been merely talking big and not delivering the promises. While Uber has promised to hire staff for a control room, it has not even set up one. None of the taxis plying for the company have been installed panic buttons nor have they displayed the helpline numbers of the RTO and police, says the report. The deadline for doing all these was 15 January. [caption id=“attachment_2076575” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Reuters [/caption] De What is worse is the adamance with which the company keeps skirting its responsibility to ensure passenger safety. “We do not hire or employ drivers and so cannot be treated on a par with cab operators like Meru and TabCab. We also do not own cabs. We simply function as an aggregator and facilitate cabs for customers of our app,” a company official has been quoted as saying in the report. The official insists that the company is not a cab operator but just a technology platform. As per the report, state transport officials  ran out patience due to this attitude of the company in the meetings they had. Uber has been in the eye of a storm after a horrific rap incidence in Delhi on 5 December. The Delhi transport authorities banned the app in Delhi as it found the company violated the Motor Vehicles Act. It was also accused of not doing enough background checks of the drivers who ply for it. However, media report said despite the ban, the service was available in Delhi. The transport authorities there have not yet given a licence to the company to operate as a radio cab service provider as they found gaps in their application. The company on Monday said in a blog that it has tightened its background check process. “We have a deep, long-term commitment to set the highest standard for safety across the industry. Our efforts to this commitment in India and around the world will be tireless and absolute,” the company said in the blog on its website.