Brace yourselves for courteous Mumbai cabbies

Mumbai: Mumbai's famous yellow and black taxi drivers are in process of modification. You should not get surprised if they welcome you on board their cab speaking in English.

The Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) along with GVK and Maharashtra Center for Entrepreneurship Development (MCED) have planned to train taxi drivers with skills in spoken English. Not only this, they also plan to also provide more information on prominent tourist places across Mumbai.

The project started at the Sahar Airport on Tuesday with around 60 cab drivers being trained on the first day. A MIAL Spokesperson said, "We are happy to see the positive response from the cab drivers and are hopeful that this will further enhance the quality of service provided by them. We are thankful to MTDC for extending their support. The success of this initiative is a motivating factor for us and we look forward to take it to the next level in future."

The project has been planned as the number of tourist visiting Maharashtra is on the rise and also to ensure smooth flow of information between the tourist and cab drivers.

As per the project on May 28 and 29, 1110 cab drivers will be trained out of which 750 will be trained at the international airports. The remaining cab drivers will be trained at well known stations such as Dadar, Kurla Terminus, Bandra Terminus, CST, Mumbai Central and Churchgate.

The project is planned to be carried out in total 37 training sessions spread across a period of two months with each batch having 30 cab drivers. Each cab driver will be given an identity card with certificates that completes the training session, also seat covers which shows various destinations of Maharashtra along with related brochures will be made available in the taxi.

MTDC has also planned to conduct free medical camps for the cab drivers after a month, and to replicate the training to other cab drivers across Mumbai region, and other parts of Maharashtra.