Auto drivers should change their existing autos for either diesel four-stroke vehicles, or a Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) model, of finally, electric autos, or e-autos.
By Aiswarya Sriram
Bangalore, Jan. 24, 2019
E-autos are not hitting the road even after their launch in 2017. The reason is that auto drivers are not ready to shift. K. Raja, an auto-driver at Shantinagara says, “We scrapped two-stroke autos and bought four-stroke autos, this works fine for us, why should we buy anything else?”
Two-stroke autos have old engines and are causing more pollution, hence the auto drivers were told by the transport department to buy either four-stroke autos or autos which run on LPG, or E-autos. Two-stroke auto engines make a lot of noise compared to four-stroke autos, said K. Raja.
Basalingaya, an auto driverat Mysore Road metro station says, “E-autos are costlier than four-stroke and two-stroke autos (which run on petrol). Government is not giving us the required amount of subsidy. So we are not changing our autos.”
A normal auto costs 1.75Lakhs, while an E-auto, which runs on battery, costs 2.25 Lakhs.
Nagarajan, another auto driver at Mysore Road says, “My two-stroke auto is running nicely, I will scrap it only if there is any problem with it.”
The Energy and Resource Institute released a research paper in April 2018, which states the amount of pollution caused by autos in Bangalore. In a day, the autos plying in Bangalore emit 1,200 tons of carbon dioxide, which amounts to 0.44 million tons per year. The paper indicates that E-autos would be best solution to decrease this pollution. The other harmful gases, which the autos emit, include nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter of 10 micrometers.
Omkareshwari, Joint Transport Commissioner, Environment and E-governance of Karnataka Transport Department said, “It’s not like auto drivers are not willing to buy E-autos. Auto-rickshaw scrap policy was announced in 2017, according to which auto-drivers were told to scrap their old two-stroke autos and buy either four-stroke, LPG autos, or e-Autos.
For that, a subsidy of Rupees 30,000 was announced. The auto drivers demanded a subsidy of Rupees 50,000. The finance department didn’t agree to this demand for increase, so we couldn’t do anything, and the auto drivers are not scrapping their autos.”
