City auto drivers to get lessons in spoken English

V Ayyappan TNN

Apr 4, 2009

Chennai: Auto drivers in the city may soon catch you by surprise by speaking to you in English. To showcase Chennai as a tourist-friendly city, the Tamil Nadu tourism department is all set to train select auto drivers in speaking English. The course will especially benefit drivers who find it difficult to interact with foreign tourists. The move comes after the tourist-friendly autorickshaw programme became a success. Under the programme, select drivers were trained in etiquette. They will now be taught spoken English to enable them to serve domestic and foreign tourists better. About 60 drivers are expected to attend the ‘Speaking English’ course that will be conducted at the Stella Maris College from 2pm to 5pm on Saturday. “We plan to issue a certificate and release a booklet on speaking English for reference,” TN tourism commissioner M Rajaram said. “We are happy that the tourism department is going to teach us English. A couple of us speak broken English while others have developed the habit after interacting with tourists,” said Ramachandran, a driver who was earlier trained under the tourist-friendly autorickshaw programme. After instances of auto drivers haggling with tourists for fares came to its notice, the tourism department introduced a fleet of 39 touristfriendly autorickshaws in May last year. A series of sensitisation programmes for drivers were also held at tourist spots, railway stations, bus stands and the airport. Tourist-friendly autorickshaws sport a different colour code (light yellow) and has the state tourism department’s brand slogan,‘Enchanting Tamil Nadu’, and pictures of tourist spots emblazoned across. The vehicles are usually deployed in front of star hotels, railway stations and tourist spots. “We have become brand ambassadors for the project. This has inspired other drivers to join us,” said Ramachandran, a driver, who has joined the programme. Following the success of the tourist-friendly autorickshaw programme here, similar autos were introduced in Kanyakumari and Madurai.