The State Road Transport Authority (RTA) is all set to conduct a meeting on Wednesday to chalk out the modalities concerned with the upcoming She Taxi scheme. The committee meeting will be held with officials of the Women Development and Child Welfare (WDCW) Department and Police Department.
“We have called a meeting to work out details and prepare a plan to implement the scheme. Even before the Government Order (GO) was issued, we had called for interested women to register on our website to see how much interest it would garner,” said a senior RTA official. He mentioned that the apart from committee members, the meeting will also involve representatives of taxi companies and interested applicants.
47 applications in totalAfter calling for interested women to register with the RTA online, the department received 47 applications in total, of which only six women had valid transport driving licences, the official said. “Of the remaining 41, 20 have non-transport driving licences with more than one-year experience on road, while the rest 21 applicants lack more than one qualification. We will see how to help them too,” he said.
However, there is good news in the offing for the 20 women with non-transport driving licences, as the RTA is ready to provide them with driving badges required to drive taxis after they apply for learning licences for transport vehicles. “And after a month of on-road experience, we can issue them the endorsement or badge. Also, all of them and the other six with the transport licences will also attend the meeting,” said the official.
The senior official explained that now the task is to identify more women who are willing to be taxi drivers. The point behind calling representative from Radio cabs and other companies is to see if they are willing to hire women cab drivers, he said.
