Cold response to Yellow Cabs; date extended

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

Cold response to Yellow Cabs; date extended
THE Punjab government has decided to extend the last date to apply for the Yellow Cabs Scheme for another fifteen days because of the poor response the scheme has received from the public, sources told The News.

The sources said a number of major issues about the scheme were still undecided as it was launched half cooked owing to some political pressures. They termed it one reason why the scheme had failed to attract the applicants from the masses.

According to the sources, nearly 2,000 applications had so far been received by the Bank of Punjab against a total number of 20,000 vehicles allocated under the schemes.

The 20 per cent down payment – which is about Rs 100,000 – as the first installment is also a huge amount for a jobless person to arrange. While compulsory tracking, insurance of vehicle and driver increase add about Rs 100,000 to the original company price.

One of the complaints received by the government is that the application form is too complicated to fill by a person with average education. Apart from that, the form also carries a number of conditions which people find hard to fulfill – such as possession of one-year-old driving licence, two guarantors with a long list of their particulars like bank account, CNIC, details of their assets and other documents which should be attested by a gazetted officer, etc.

Interestingly, the Bank of Punjab officials are not providing any guidance or help to the applicants in filling the application form, which is becoming one of the major problems for the applicants, the sources said.

One of the key decisions still required to be taken is about the ownership of the vehicles. It is still to be decided who, the Punjab government or the Bank of Punjab, should claim the ownership of the vehicles. According to the sources, the indecision in this regard is making the BoP officials give a cold shoulder to the Yellow Cab Scheme.

The Punjab government has allocated an amount of eight billion rupees for the scheme, making it a potential claimer of the ownership of the vehicles. Whereas, the application form designed by the BoP is in line with the guidelines of the State Bank of Pakistan as specified for the commercial banks for providing loan services to the general clients.

The application forms contain a number of questions people find very difficult to answer.

For example, the applicant is asked to mention the route of their operation inside the given town or city, which is something very difficult to be answered by a cab driver. Not only that, there are many columns asking some very illogical questions from the applicants - such as providing details of ‘daily average no of trips’; average fare per trip; average distance per trip; number of working days per month; petrol price; mileage per litre; average cost of petrol per kilo meter; average daily maintenance expenses; expected income per day; and average direct expense per day.

When contacted, Yellow Cab Scheme head MPA Sheikh Aloadin told The News that the conditions were likely to be relaxed and the chief minister had been informed about difficulties facing the applicants. He said that education criterion was likely to be brought down to metric. The one-year driving license condition could also be relaxed, he said, adding that the CM had decided to extend the deadline of the application date.

An official of BoP also confirmed that ownership of scheme was yet to decide by the government. He said they had devised the forms under the guidelines of SBP in order to protect them from any punitive action taken by the central bank against them.