BMTC women commuters unaware of safety panel

Ahna Prakash | NT
Bengaluru

In 2013, Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) announced a women’s safety committee for the safety of women passengers. It was said that BMTC would set up a committee to look into the complaints of sexual harassment of women passengers.

However, this initiative has not been able to much headway due to lack of awareness among the commuters and improper functioning. Harini, a student and a commuter of BMTC buses, said that she had never heard about a helpline or the women’s safety committee.

“I didn’t know any such committee existed. We come across sexual harassment almost every week on public transport, but we don’t know whom to report. If women passengers are not even aware that they can seek help if they are sexually harassed in a BMTC bus, what’s the point of the initiative,” she said.

Another commuter, Harshali K, a working woman who regularly commutes in a BMTC bus from Electronic city to Ejipura, claims that a man tried to touch her inappropriately on a BMTC bus in June. “When you are travelling alone at night, you come across these people who would try to touch you inappropriately; also, when this happened, the conductor didn’t do anything about him.”

When News Trail enquired about the committee and helpline from the conductors at the Shivaji Nagar bus stand, not even one conductor or driver had a clue about the committee. The BMTC also has ‘Pink Sarathi’ cabs launched to address the grievances of women passengers on the road within 10 minutes after a report gets filed. Yet, not many women commuters seem to be aware of that.

Meenakshi Giridhar of Durga, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working for women’s safety, says that there is a need to strictly implement the women helpline number (1-800-425-1663) and create awareness amongst female commuters about the number and the Sarathi vehicles.

“When you set up a committee to address sexual harassment, the government should create the required awareness about it. Also, BMTC needs to come up with a simpler helpline number, or they need to stick these helpline numbers in every corner of the bus so that women commuters can know,” she opined.

Currently, BMTC has 6,500 buses, of which only 563 have GPS devices, making it challenging to track buses and their route. In 2020, the BMTC had planned to revamp the IT infrastructure using the Nirbhaya fund, but it hasn’t happened yet.