Special van service for women

The decision has been taken after a successful run of wagons.

RAWALPINDI: The City Traffic Police (CTP) has decided to run special Suzuki vans for women on specific routes of cantonment. The drivers for the vans will also be women. The decision has been taken in line with the already successfully running of special “Hiace” wagons for women in the same area of the city.

The CTP has also sought cooperation from private transporters of the district to run the service in different areas of the city.

In a bid to make the service more successful, city administration will be taking a number of steps to provide model traffic system to citizens, including declaring of roads as “one-way”, establishment of pad-car parkings and using the empty places around the roads to better the traffic services.

SP Traffic Rawalpindi said the conductors of the service, however, will be men so that they could help drivers in case the vehicles go out of order. He said that police were trying their  best to make the cantonment area a “Model Traffic Area” and the start of the service would be a step towards it. The official said that the decision to run 10 wagons for women, alone, had been very successful and now the van service for women will become operational with the public-private partnership of the transporters.

Chairman of Suzuki Owner and Drivers Welfare Association Rawalpindi and Islamabad Raja Riaz confirmed that the administration had contacted the association and the vehicles for the purpose would be run from Saddar to Dhairi Tali and Dhoke Syedan in the next two weeks, and expanded later on.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 4^th, 2010.