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Special buses too meagre to ease women commuters’ woes

City Correspondent
Women commuters continue to face hassles on their way to work md back home every day as the number of special buses introduced for them is inadequate in the city.
According to regular commuters most city service buses these days do not have separate seats for women and those with reserve seats rarely keep those free for them.
“Buses do not want to take female passengers even if they have reserved seats. Whenever a woman passenger wants to get into the bus the conductors say they do not have any seat left. But the fact is in most cases the male passengers occupy our seats,” said Shamsun, a service holder.
“The authorities should look into the matter and women must be more vocal and ask the conductors to ensure the reserve seats for them," she said.
Many women commuters said during rush hours in the morning and in the evening it
becomes tough to get into a bus.
“There was a time when public buses used to keep seats for women but today women have to literally fight to get a seat," said an elderly woman who is a regularcommuter.
However, many women commuters have different thoughts about the special bus service.
"I think it is not logical to have separate buses for women because in that case we should also have separate buses for the elderly people and the physically challenged. If there are enough buses then we do not need separate buses for women," said Shahana, a regular commuter.
"Number of working women is increasing every day. So, keeping reserved seats will be meaningless in the near future," she said.
Change in mentality and cooperation of the male commuters is a vital thing to help ease problems in public transports, she observed.
Shubhashish Saha, DGM Operation, BRTC, said the women's service is not very
encouraging and the authorities are incurring losses in running the women bus services.
"One main reason is that most of the time the working women do not wait for the special buses. When their work is over they rush for the normal buses to go home as soon as possible,” he said.
Asked if there is any plan to increase the number of buses for women passengers Saha said, "Right now we are unable to increase the number of buses or routes because the existing ones are in short of passengers. We are incurring considerable losses for operating the routes.”
“To recover the losses we have a plan to use the buses in normal routes and rent them out for student services at the Dhaka University. In this way we expect to compensate 70 percent loss incurred from the service," he said.
"Still we are running the service and only BRTC is ninning it. Private bus companies can also create example by introducing women's service but they are yet
to come forward," he said.
He suggested if government subsidises then it would be possible to expand the service.
"May be then we will be able to make it viable," he said.
At present BRTC have women bus services on several important routes in the city. They include: A. 8:10 am: From Mirpur 10 to Gulistan via Asad Gate, Science Lab and Azimpur. B. 8:15 am: From Khilgaon Taltala to Gulistan via Basabo, Mugda, Motijheel. C. 7:30 am: From Khilgaon Taltala to Gulistan via Basabo, Mugda, Motijheel. D. 5:05 pm: From GPO to Khilgaon Taltala via Basabo, Mugda, Motijheel. E. 7:30 am: From B1SCIC to Gulistan via Pagla and Jatrabari.
One bus that starts from Mirpur 10 to Gulistan via Asad Gate, Science Lab and Azimpur at 7:40 am is shut down temporarily because it was not getting enough passengers because of Ramadan.
"It will start again after Ramadan,” he said.