SHILLONG, April 20: The Meghalaya Urban Development Authority (MUDA) seems to have suffered a setback at the hands of the taxi drivers as far as ferrying passengers from the city to the Inter-State Bus Terminus (ISBT) at Mawiong is concerned.
Cabbies operating to and from the ISBT foiled an experiment initiated by MUDA to ferry passengers from the Polo parking lot using SPTS buses after which the trial was called off.
A Transport official told The Shillong Times on Wednesday that a meeting was held last week to discuss the difficulties being faced by the passengers and MUDA had decided to run SPTS buses from Polo parking lot to the ISBT to ferry the passengers.
As per the plan, which was initiated on a trial basis, SPTS shuttle service would start from the Polo parking lot at 2 pm and buses would be available every 30 minutes.
However, a MUDA official revealed that they had started the shuttle service but faced stiff opposition from the local taxi association who prevented passengers from boarding the SPTS buses.
“The taxi drivers threatened our drivers. We had sent 4-5 buses but we got reports from our drivers that they were not being allowed to enter the ISBT,” the MUDA official said, adding that the shuttle service has been stopped.
“We will inform the government of the matter and let the government take a decision in this regard,” the official said, adding that they had fixed the bus charge from Polo to ISBT at Rs 30 per passenger whereas the cabbies are charging anything between Rs 300 and Rs 700.
