As many as 18 women are all set to graduate this month from the first-ever training initiative launched in the country to produce female bus drivers.
The training programme, which is based in Karachi, was launched by the Sindh Mass Transit Authority (SMTA), a subsidiary of the Sindh government, under its vision to increase the number of women workforce in the public transport sector.
Earlier, female conductors were hired for the women-only Pink buses launched in Karachi under the Peoples Bus Service of the Sindh government. The training programme was launched on November 1. Seventeen of the 18 women selected for training belong to Karachi while one of the course participants is from Hyderabad who daily commutes from her native city to attend the training programme.Two of the course participants are from the underprivileged area of Lyari. From November 1 till mid-December, the selected women attended an orientation session on driving skills at the drivers’ training school of the Motor & Highway Police on M-9 near Gulshan-e-Maymar.
In the orientation programme, the course participants learnt about the fundamentals of driving skills and road safety rules. A driving simulator was used at the training school to train the would-be female bus drivers.
