Each order makes delivery agents count every drop

The steep hike in fuel prices has severely impacted the earnings of the city’s delivery workforce, which has been overworked, under-paid and struggling to make ends meet.

On Tuesday, the seventh day in 10 days of price hike, cost of petrol retailed at Rs 105.94 per litre in the city. Many delivery executives lament that their take-home money has decreased, as fuel prices surge every day.

It has become difficult to make ends meet with increase in price hike and with reports suggesting that prices will continue to move up by Rs 12/litre.

K Santhosh, a food delivery executive, said that he has been doing food deliveries even before Covid hit the country.

“It was a good job with decent pay. But during Covid, it became tough. Now, it’s even worse, as cost of fuel keeps increasing with no end in sight. Even if I increase my working hours, this will affect everything else,” he said.

Adding that his incentive depends on delivering food to customers within 30 minutes, he stated, “This leads to a drop in mileage which in turn increases my expenses on petrol.” he said.

Before Covid, Santhosh used to spend Rs 250 a day on petrol. “Today, I spend Rs 350 for the same quantity. I used to work for 10 hours a day and would earn Rs 1,000-1,200. But now, even after 12-13 hours of work, I’m barely able to earn Rs 1,000 of which Rs 350 is my petrol expenditure,” he rued.

Ramakrishnan, another delivery agent, said that he was paid Rs 35 as a delivery charge when petrol price was Rs 80/litre. “Now with petrol prices going up, we’re being paid less at Rs 20 per delivery,” he said. “It’s increasingly becoming difficult to achieve the daily incentive and weekly incentive.”