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AP truck drivers face inhuman conditions: Study
They are starved, suffer mental stress, abused on the road and sometimes killed, yet they move on carrying valuable goods for the people crisscrossing the country every day without rest. The state and the society take them for granted.
Visakhapatnam: They are starved, suffer mental stress, abused on the road and sometimes killed, yet they move on carrying valuable goods for the people crisscrossing the country every day without rest. The state and the society take them for granted. The technology has changed improvising the vehicles, the roads have been upgraded but the character of a driver remained unchanged in the last 50 years.
These were the findings of deputy commissioner of transport S Venkateswara Rao, for which Andhra University awarded him PhD here on Monday. His thesis was titled ‘Role of human factor in truck transport-A study of socio-economic conditions of truck drivers in Andhra Pradesh’.
Rao interviewed 500 drivers with a set of 1,200 questions and found some interesting facts which made him make few suggestions to the government of Andhra Pradesh, National Highway Authority of India, truck owners associations, manufacturers, road users, both private and government.
In the process of his research, Rao also studied the road transport development and policy in India. “Disturbing facts emerged during my course of interview on the lifestyles of drivers, some of which I already knew with my experience in the road transport for years,’’ the deputy commissioner said.
The state has four lakh drivers and of them, 94 per cent said they spent less than two weeks per month with their family. Similarly, 95 per cent reported ill-health caused by driving, 90 per cent said they suffer from mental stress, 94 per cent reported disturbance of sleep every day, 57 per cent said they are being harassed by officials, 85 per cent said their job was root cause of all the troubles. And only 43 per cent had need-based medical check-up. “Their biological clock is disturbed and most of the drivers end up in ruins,’’ Rao added.
He said the average salary of these drivers is Rs 10,000 which is far less than in many Asian countries. There is no social security and many do not keep track of their children’s education. Around 19 per cent of them are also illiterate. In his suggestion, Venkateswara Rao said lorry owners associations, truck manufacturers, road users, both private and government, should pay attention to the pathetic conditions of these drivers whose life has not changed over the decades.
“They can build houses, schools exclusively for their children and create corpus fund apart from insuring their lives,’’ Rao added. Their working environment should also be improved by upgrading the conditions of the cabin, setting up rest rooms for every 50 km distance on national highways and strictly enforcing Motor Transport Workers Act of 1961 which makes it mandatory for 30 minutes rest after five hours of driving.
By KMP Patnaik
