Provincial Transport Minister Sharjeel Memon said that if our experiment is successful, we can bring more buses across the city and in Sindh.
Pink bus service has been started for women in Sindh province of Pakistan. These air-conditioned buses will run from Friar Hall to Clifton Bridge. Which is one of the busiest routes of the city. The Government of Pakistan has just started with 6 buses. These buses meet at an interval of half an hour in the busiest routes of the city. Provincial Transport Minister Sharjeel Memon said that if our experiment is successful, we can bring more buses across the city and in Sindh. Memon said that our aim is to make public transport safe and easy for women.
He said that as per our estimate, 50% of the passengers are women during peak hours and they face lot of difficulties to board the bus. Not only this, they do not even get enough space to stand in the bus. Let us tell you that launched on February 1, the new service is Pakistan’s second attempt to start public transport that protects women from harassment. Earlier in 2012, the Government of Pakistan started the bus service in Lahore as a public-private partnership. Which had to be closed within two years due to funding.
‘Public transport women face a lot of trouble’
Rakhi Matan, 35, a domestic worker, says that a woman has to be alert all the time in public transport. Touching and lewd comments by men are common. He said that once he had to take off his slippers due to molestation in public buses. So they have stopped traveling in public transport.
Pink is just a positive step – Dr. Hadiya Majeed
Dr Hadiya Majeed, Associate Professor at the University of Lahore, is researching transport and its relationship to women’s participation in the labor market. She sees the pink buses as a positive step to encourage more women in the workplace. According to her, poor public transport is a major factor behind the extremely low proportion of women in the labor force in Pakistan.
Inadequate transportation meant women often had to take more expensive taxis or rely on lifts from relatives. This also made it difficult for women to look far and wide to find work.
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