Ola and Uber drives are on an indefinite strike across Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bengaluru, among other cities, protesting poor payouts received from the app-based taxi hailing firms. While most cabs are off the road in Mumbai, users from cities like Delhi, Bengaluru and others have told Medianama that they are able to book cabs (some users had to pay surge fares). The strike was first called by the Maharashtra Navnirman Vahatuk Sena, a driver union in Mumbai and ET reports that 60,000 cabs will go off the roads in Mumbai alone. Sanjay Naik, the union's president has said that the strike is the result of Ola and Uber failing to keep their promises. Naik told PTI that the companies had promised that drivers will be making at least 1.5 lakhs a month but aren't even able to make half of that. This has put the drivers, who had taken loans to buy cars, under huge debt. Naik further alleged that these taxi-hailing companies are giving first priority to company-owned cars rather than driver-owned vehicles, causing a slump in their business. While taxi-hailing companies offered loan-guarantee letters to drivers through the Mudra scheme and that too without any verification, they are defaulting on repayment now as their costs are not covered, he claimed. Drivers had earlier told the media that Ola and Uber are taking a commission of up to 27% of their earnings a day (a number which tallies with MediaNama’s deep dive into driver issues with the companies). They added that they…
