Welcome Women Pink iBus Drivers On BRTS Corridor In Indore, Madhya Pradesh

Indore, Madhya Pradesh: Atal Indore City Transport Service Limited (AiCTSL) launched two pink buses for women passengers last year in February. The Pink ibusses are meant only for women passengers and are equipped with security cameras, passenger information system, passenger announcement system, SOS button, and a woman bus warden. The only male aspect of which is that the busses were driven by male drivers dressed in pink uniforms.

As per the AiCTSL public relation officer Mala Thakur last year, they were wanting to hire a female licensed driver for the pink ibusses and although it wasn’t possible then due to the unavailability of trained heavy transport vehicle driving license holders, it certainly is now! The two pink ibusses meant for female passengers in the 11.56 km Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) now have female drivers.

The two drivers will be Ritu Narwal, aged 35 and Archana Katare, aged 25. The former woman driver has already started her job as a driver starting early on this month between Niranjanpur crossing and Rajiv Gandhi Crossing. Archana will also soon be joining in soon and start the same shift as Ritu from 8 am to 2 pm.

Both the women drivers have the heavy vehicle driving licenses with having gone through a month-long training to drive the ibus on the BRTS corridor in early hours of 3-5 am and are now ready and prepared to drive the women passengers officially, says PRO of Atal Indore City Transport Services Limited (AICTSL), Mala Thakur.

Ritu Narwal, one of the drivers initially stated driving a van of special children school in 2015 after which she started driving taxis at five-star hotels in Indore. Ritu who has always wanted to drive busses when she grew up was often and always contradicted by her father who told her that driving cars, busses and trucks was a job for the men. However, she was stubborn enough to not believe those words and achieve her ambition of driving busses.

Katare on the other hand, a resident of Moosakhedi has been a commercial driver since 2015 driving taxis for five-star hotels as well. She is a mother to two kids and also driven tankers with her husband who drives diesel-petrol tankers from Indore to Mumbai during the initial phase of Covid lockdown.

Archana found driving the ibus pretty easy initially as she was used to driving tankers around the start of Covid with her husband. However, as she started with her month’s training of driving the ibus from 3-5 am along the narrow roads of BRTS, she soon realized that it wasn’t as easy and with smaller vehicles along the route, things were quite tougher. This uneasiness and obstacle were soon surpassed as she practiced and got better after her training.

Archana is now confident to drive the Pink Ibus with little to no effort and safety for all her women passengers. Within the next few days, the trial run would eventually come to an end and then both the female drivers can get to working on their driving the Ibusses. Mala Thakur also added that they are still on the lookout for two additional drivers to join the lady drivers.