Colour Change! Colour of Chennai Metro City buses for women to turn pink!
Posted on: 12/Jul/2022 12:29:35 PM
Women in Chennai, who are allowed to travel free in Chennai Metro City Buses, will soon have to board only the pink colour buses of the Chennai Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC).
This colour change will differentiate these buses from other express or deluxe category buses run by MTC.
The Transport Department announced last July that women can travel free in ordinary city/town buses! This has led to a rise in the footfall of women using MTC buses.
The footfall for women using the MTC buses was 40% last year and this year, it has gone up to 60%!!
The Minister for Transport of the State Government of Tamil Nadu, S S. Sivasankar observed, "In the past one year, more than 132 crores have benefited from this scheme and the state government sanctioned around Rs. 1600 crores as subsidies to various state transport undertakings including MTC to implement this scheme effectively!"
Mentioning a recent study by the State Planning Commission, the minister informed the reporters last week that the scheme had helped every woman travelling for work, saving approximately, up to Rs. 1000/- per month and use this saving for their family expenses!
However, this welfare scheme is restricted to only ordinary buses. Ms S. Pushpalatha, a teacher said in this regard, " Many of the buses do not have stickers on the front windshield or they are not legible! So, many times, women end up boarding the express or deluxe buses and pay for the ticket!"
To resolve this issue, MTC is changing the colour of the ordinary buses to pink so that the women can spot them from a distance and board the same without any confusion!
As a trial run, MTC will be launching this on select routes from next week and then, based on the response, it will be extended to all other routes as per the statement from a senior official! Out of the 3300 buses currently plying half are ordinary services.
There is another issue regarding this free commute for women - the hesitancy shown by the MTC conductors, who complained that they were losing out on their incentives (based on daily ticket collection) ever since the scheme was launched!
When this issue was taken up for discussion at the 14th Wage Revision talks, Tamil Nadu Transport Department announced that their incentive amount will be doubled.
Apart from this, the State Transport Minister of the State Government of Tamil Nadu shared on Monday (11th June) that the Tamil Nadu State Government has agreed to the various demands of the transport staff regarding COVID special payoff Rs. 300/-, promotion for r 1078 supervisors, and increase in allowances, as per the official release on this!
