Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Indore comes first and adds a new feather in its cap with the first-ever woman driving a public bus in the country on Thursday.
After training for one month, Ritu Narwale from Indore operated the Pink i-bus, a special bus for female passengers, for the first time. More than 50 women passengers traveled in this bus.
In order to provide safe and convenient public transport facilities to the women in the city, Atal Indore City Transport Services Limited (AiCTSL) in February 2020 commissioned pink buses in the BRTS corridor.
The plan was that in these special buses run for women, the drivers and conductors would also be women, but due to the lack of women drivers, these buses were being operated by male drivers.
A few days back, AiCTSL started training after the management found two women bus drivers.
After a month of training, she was given the opportunity to drive a bus for passengers for the first time after two hours of training between 3 am and 5 am on Thursday morning.
Jayant Pal, a supervisor, and her trainer said, "Ritu drove two laps between Niranjanpur to Rajiv Gandhi circle this morning. She drove the bus with full confidence and excellence. It is considered the most important thing to park the bus at the stop, which was also done very well by Ritu,” Pal said.
AICTSL spokesperson Mala Thakur said that women passengers were also very happy to see women bus drivers for the first time in the pink bus and encouraged Ritu. “Ritu has become the first woman driver to run the state's first passenger bus,” Thakur said.
“Training of the second female driver, Archana, is also going on. Soon they will also start running the bus with the passengers seated," said Sandeep Soni, CEO AiCTSL.
