PATNA: There’s a bad news for city’s women commuters. The ‘ladies’ special’ buses would soon be converted into general ones as the ‘pink’ vehicles, rolled out recently on the city roads at the state government’s behest, are incurring losses.
“We are not getting enough commuters. Our move to allow women’s male family members to accompany them, has also failed to improve the occupancy rate,” a senior official of Eden Transport Pvt Ltd, which runs these buses, said and added that the firm hasn’t lost all hopes as yet and is expecting better business after the schools and colleges reopen.
On an average 450 passengers commute by a general bus while a ‘ladies’ special’ fails to attract even 50 women every day.
State transport secretary Uday Singh Kumawat confirmed there’s a move to “de-reserve” the ladies’ specials. “But we would reserve at least 12 seats in these buses for women,” he told TOI on Tuesday.
Fact is, these buses have already become general buses. “Men outnumber women in ladies’ specials and at times we travel standing while men occupy all the seats,” complained Shilpa Mathur, an MA student of Patna University. Padma Lata, a government clerk, nodded. “Men in ladies’ special buses don’t give space to women,” she said and added that she had since stopped commuting by buses.
Soni Siddiqui, a conductor on a city bus, agreed. “In case of scarcity of seats, we ask men to vacate for women. But they turn a deaf ear to us,” she said.
Men, even though they are not accompanied by women, board these buses and the crew look the other way. “These buses are overcrowded though chief minister Nitish Kumar at the time of their inauguration had promised that overloading would not be allowed in the city buses,” said Parveen Ansari, a law student.
An Eden Transport official said these buses have all-woman crew for whom it is naturally difficult to handle petulant men. “We fired some drivers who were found taking in single male passengers,” he said and added even some conductors are reported to be conniving with the drivers with a view to earning more commission.
Eden Transport’s senior manager PK Paul said the commuters with a Rs 3 ticket would earlier block the exit as they had to travel shorter distances. “We have changed the fare structure to address this problem,” he said.