Parking fee: Fleet cabs face RTO heat in Mumbai

All fleet cabs charging passengers Rs50 extra as parking fee  when they hire a cab from the Mumbai airport will soon have to face the music. The Regional Transport Authority (RTO) has issued notices to all fleet cabs operating from the airport asking for an explanation and plans to take action against them.

Every time a passenger hires a fleet cab (FC) from the Mumbai airport, he has to pay Rs50 in addition to the fare as parking charge.  Though this has been happening for more than five months, the RTO noticed this only recently. 

“The Rs50 charge taken from the passenger is not legal and nobody has given you the permission to collect it,” reads the show cause notice, “Stop it immediately. And please tell us why no action should be taken against you.”

An RTO official said, “When these cabs were given permission to operate from the airport, the airport operator had told them that they would collect a parking charge from them.  They had agreed to this and said they will not collect it from passengers.  But now they are doing just that.”

The RTO said it has put together a report and sent it to the transport commissioner .  When contacted, VN More said that he has not received any such report yet.