Metro bus service – a boon for working women

Female commuters travelling between the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi find Metro bus service a welcome relief from the continuous eve teasing they otherwise have to face on public transport.

For most of them, travelling by public transportation used to be nothing less than a nightmare. While problems like overcrowding on the buses remain, women generally feel safer travelling on the metro.

Female commuters on other routes find it an injustice to not have the same facility and want the service to be extended to them as well.

Eve teasing or sexual harassment in public transport is an old dilemma for working women and female students. When you get on the road travelling on local transport, you’re more than likely to come across a foul mouthed driver or a fellow passenger making vulgar remarks and brazen stares while everyone else, including men try their best to ignore them and show as slight a discomfort as possible.

During a field survey, a large number of women showed satisfaction with the service. They said that while problems due to over-crowdedness remained, they, by far, preferred to travel through the metro service.

Nabila Bukhari, a 30 year old resident of Shams Abad who travels to Islamabad daily where she works as a sales girl in a shopping mall, said, “I faced harassment in vans many times but couldn’t accumulate enough courage to raise my voice as I had to travel on same route on a regular basis and I didn’t want to get myself noticed.”

She said that she now travels through the metro bus and feels safer as it has a separate travelling area for women. “Due to limited space women still face problems,” she added, “government should take some steps in this regard such as having some buses that are exclusively for female commuters.”

The service, however, is being offered to working women travelling only on this route while many others still have to travel through the vans and face the same problems. When we talked to some of them during our field survey, they criticized the federal government for not providing the same facility to the people living in other areas.

Shabana Arif is a young girl working in a call center in Islamabad. She travels between Bhara Kahu which is a suburban area of the city, and her office in Islamabad. She said that most of the drivers harass female passengers. “Unwanted touching while shifting the gears happens too often and is very uncomfortable,” she said.

“I have no other option since I have to sit on the front seat, next to the driver, because these are the only seats reserved for women in the van,” she explained. Shabana continued, “Instead of spending huge funds on the construction of metro track, government should have used the money to provide the same buses on all routes between Rawalpindi and Islamabad.” She called it unfair that she, along with many other women, was still facing the same problems while government “turned a blind eye to their situation.”

We have until recently done very little to prevent workplace harassment of women. This is one of the reasons why Pakistani women’s participation in the workplace is among the lowest in the world. But while laws are now being put in place to prevent harassment in educational institutions and in the workplace, we also need to focus on making them feel safe while travelling to their workplaces, schools and colleges.