Top News
Goa’s all-women tourist cab service hits roadblock
Panaji: India’s first all-women tourism taxi service, flagged off three months ago in Goa, has hit a roadblock.
A Church-operated NGO Centre for Responsible Tourism (CRT) Thursday said that contrary to public knowledge, a private company was running the cab service and that the women drivers were being allegedly forced to drive at night with male passengers without any security.
CRT blamed the Goa Tourism Development Corp (GTDC) for the “scam and sham”.
According to Fr. Maverick Fernandes, who heads Caritas (under which CRT functions), the social and charitable wing of the influential Roman Catholic Church in Goa, the 10 women taxi drivers roped in to drive the radio-taxi fleet were not even trained in basic martial arts.
GTDC launched the cab service in October last year.
“The GTDC has been lying all along. About martial arts, about the taxi service being run by the corporation, about salaries and their rules about ferrying women clients,” Fernandes told a press conference.
“Instead of making them entrepreneurs as they had claimed, they have opened doors for private taxi operators and made the women employees,” he said.
Goa is one of the leading beach tourism destinations in India and attracts nearly three million tourists annually.
But the lack of public transport, coupled with the need to ensure safer travel for women, led the GTDC to start the all-women taxi service.
The media kit provided to journalists at the time suggested that the taxi service was started by tourism authorities.
“Even the women drivers were given the impression that they were being hired by GTDC before the service was outsourced to a private cab operator, which has rendered these women vulnerable in more ways than one,” Fernandes said.
Said Rita Vaz, one of the women drivers: “We do not feel safe on the roads at night. The emergency buttons provided in the car do not work and the GPS tracking service stops after 7 p.m.
“Earlier, the rules said we had to carry male clients if there was a woman along with them. Now the company wants us to ferry all-male passenger groups even at night,” Vaz said.
Vaz and her colleagues have now decided to stop driving the radio-cabs until their demands for regulated salary, enhanced security and insurance cover were met.
GTDC officials said an official response to the allegations would be made later Thursday.
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
Content provided by Adverloom
Cheers and Cheers: Barzilla’s Joyful Ode to Inclusivity and Celebration
Casino Days Reveal Internal Data on Most Popular Smartphones
Meghalaya Reserves Legalized Gambling and Sports Betting for Tourists
Lockdowns in China Force Urban Communities to Defy Censorship and Vent Frustration Online
What monkey fled with a bag containing evidence in it: Read full story
IPL 20202 UPDATE: KXIP vs MI IPL Dream11 Team Prediction for Today Match, Update Point Table of all Team.
In a Live debate AAP leader Syed Asad Abbas hurls abuses to BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma.
‘India’s Most Wanted’ trailer out Arjun Kapoor on hunt of Osama-Bin-Laden
Time to move on: Sonakshi on Shatrughan’s joining Congress
