Rickshaw, cab drivers head out of city

Hyderabad: Drivers of autorickshaws, taxis and app-based cab aggregators are leaving the city in droves as the lockdown has deprived them of their daily earnings and made repayment of loans, taken for vehicles, difficult.
According to driver unions close to 20,000 drivers have already left Hyderabad, in the last four months, while many who waited for the financial situation to improve are now considering returning to their native places.This, after news about the state government contemplating another lockdown, started doing the rounds.
Drivers and eyewitnesses that TOI spoke to put the number of drivers from Hyderabad crossing the state border at 30 to 50 per day.
Muppu Krishna, 32, from a village in Chhattisgarh’s Korba district said: “I have been driving an autorickshaw in Hyderabad for the past eight years. I ferry school children and others, but since schools are closed since past four months and the fear of coronavirus is still prevalent among people, I am struggling to feed my family and repay my loans. I am mulling returning to my village.” Krishna, who lives with his wife and two children, said he has no savings left.
Members of cab and auto unions said drivers were going in groups, either with their families or with other drivers. S Purnachander, a cabbie who left for his hometown in AP’s Ammapalem village on Monday morning said, “There is no food in the city. The cabs which we took on lease and surrendered to the company during the lockdown are not released yet. I will find some work in the village. We will think of returning only when things return to normal.”
According to union leaders, the cab and autorickshaw drivers are headed to their native places in AP, Karnataka, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. “While some are planning to go back in trains, others are hitching a ride on lorries. The number of people who are leaving has increased in the past one week. Apart from financial crisis, many are also leaving due to the fear of contracting the virus,” said Satti Reddy, a member of the Telangana Auto Drivers JAC.