Police conduct drive in city
By Our Reporter
Shillong: Following several complaints regarding illegal parking of tourist taxis at the main hub of the city, the traffic police on Monday conducted a drive against illegal parking in which they seized a large number of tourist cabs from several areas of the city.
The traffic police conducted the drive at around 6 am on Monday wherein they seized around 5 to 6 licenses of these tourist drivers parked adjacent to the Civil Hospital besides summoning around 10 to 15 tourist taxi drivers parked at Keating Road and Khyndailad. The rest managed to escape as soon as they got the information that the police were on the lookout for offenders.
It was noticed that tourist taxis were parked at Keating Road, MUDA parking lot and near City Hut Dhaba hoping that they would escape from the traffic police but the huge jam at Khyndailad made the police look for reasons. They found a large number of tourist taxis were parked at these ‘illegal’ stands.
It may be mentioned that the tourist taxi stands have been placed at Polo and near Anjalee Cinema point respectively to avoid jam in the busy Khyndailad area but defying this rule, these tourist vehicles have managed to pick up passengers from Khyndailad without getting noticed for quite sometime now.
One passenger boarding a tourist cab from Shillong to Guwahati was called by one Dalal (middleman) from Khyndailad. When he enquired where the cab was located he said it was parked at MUDA parking lot where they only have to pay Rs 50.
“I didn’t know their parking lots were at Polo and Anjalee, I needed to go to Guwahati so I responded to the calls of these touts where they took me either to Keating Road or MUDA where they parked their cabs”, said one tourist.
Meanwhile, Additional Superintendent of Police (Traffic) Herbert Lyngdoh said “We have been conducting surprise inspections and managed to apprehend many tourist taxi drivers. We know there are many of them out there but every time we conduct inspections, they manage to escape”, he said.
“We usually catch these people early in the morning and have summoned several offenders them but in spite this they repeat their shenanigans during the day time”, Lyngdoh added.
Interestingly, it was learnt that the MUDA parking lot is meant for private cars only not tourist cabs but many tourist taxi drivers/owners are seen parking their cabs there waiting for passengers.
Surprisingly, the parking attendants at MUDA parking lot were ignorant of the fact that the tourist taxis were not allowed to park there. “We did not know that tourist taxis were not allowed to park here so we let them in”, said one attendant.
Tourist drivers waiting for passengers at Polo and Anjalee have expressed their disappointment over the dwindling number of passengers at the stands. “Sometimes we have to go with only two passengers as it is difficult to get passengers out here”, said one tourist driver.
The Additional SP (traffic) informed that they have asked MUDA to keep a strict check and not allow tourist cabs to park their vehicles inside the parking lot and also warned such drivers to abide by the rules failing which serious action will be taken against them.