MUMBAI: The Mumbai traffic police on Thursday held a meeting with all online food and grocery delivery companies and handed them a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). The companies have been told to stop the time-based delivery system, in which food or groceries are delivered within a few minutes to customers, corroborated Satyanarayan Choudhary, joint commissioner of police, Mumbai traffic.
The police, who have been issuing these warnings for years now, pointed out that due to this target, delivery partners boys break traffic rules to reach their destinations in time and risk their own as well as other people’s lives. The company representatives at the meeting were given various instructions, including that of a police clearance certificate (PCC) for all their delivery boys. This, the police said, would be helpful from the safety point of view as well as enabling the companies to keep all the records of their delivery partners.
“Apart from the PCC, we have also asked the companies to check and keep a tab on the e-challans of their delivery boys,” said a police officer. “We have told them that if they use two-wheelers with pending e-challans for traffic violations, the vehicles will be seized by the traffic department.”
The police said that they had already acted against 8,399 delivery boys on two-wheelers in the past 16 days for driving on the wrong side or without a helmet, jumping signals, over-speeding and parking illegally. “Most importantly, we have told the companies to stop promising timeline-based deliveries and giving delivery boys rewards for, as it pushes them to break all traffic rules and put their life as well as those of others on the line in their haste to comply with the target,” said the police officer. “This pressure to meet rapid delivery timelines is contributing to reckless behaviour on city roads.”
{{/usCountry}}The police said that they had already acted against 8,399 delivery boys on two-wheelers in the past 16 days for driving on the wrong side or without a helmet, jumping signals, over-speeding and parking illegally. “Most importantly, we have told the companies to stop promising timeline-based deliveries and giving delivery boys rewards for, as it pushes them to break all traffic rules and put their life as well as those of others on the line in their haste to comply with the target,” said the police officer. “This pressure to meet rapid delivery timelines is contributing to reckless behaviour on city roads.”
{{/usCountry}}The police said that areas such as Jogeshwari, Worli, Byculla, D N Nagar and Oshiwara had become hotspots of reckless driving due to high delivery volumes and dense traffic conditions.
HT reached out to food and grocery delivery platforms Zomato, Swiggy, and Zepto for comment, but didn’t receive a response.
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