Mobile-based cab service company Uber, currently banned in the capital after the December 5 rape involving one of its drivers, said it was putting in place five extra layers of security designed for customers in India. These include mandatory police verification of drivers, independent document and background checks on them, setting up of response teams to deal with safety-related incidents and an enhanced app that provides real-time information on a customer’s ride to four-five of her friends or family members. Uber executives said they were also putting together an adjudication team which would verify the authenticity of every document submitted by a driver. “This will be a team specializing in detecting fraud,” said Eric Alexander, President of business, Uber Asia.
In tandem, the company said it would perform background checks on all its drivers. “Our critics have talked about the background checks Uber drivers go through in the US. Now it will be done in India as well. We are getting a private agency to look into the antecedents of each person that comes into the Uber system,” the Uber Asia official said. Alexander, however, pointed out that background checks are a lot easier in the US, where agencies have access to centralized databases. “We are trying to customise it for here and not replicate a system from outside,” he added.
