The Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) has planned to set up a committee to look into the complaints pertaining to sexual harassment of women passengers in City buses.
The proposed committee will have women commuters and BMTC officials as its members.
It will take up issues faced by women commuters and also come up with solutions for the problems faced by them. The Corporation is already in the process of installing 500 CCTV cameras in City buses.
The Corporation is also planning to avail the assistance of traffic policemen to ensure that eve-teasers on board are handed over to the police.
“If there is any incident in the bus, most of the times it is difficult to take the vehicle with passengers to the police station. Hence, we are in talks with the traffic police officials so that their help can be availed whenever a need arises,” a senior BMTC official said.
‘Several initiatives’
Anjum Parvez, the Managing Director of BMTC said the Corporation had taken several initiatives to ensure safe travel for all passengers on BMTC buses.
He said there were a lot of “coordination issues” to be addressed before availing the assistance of traffic cops in preventing harassment of women commuters.
Besides, the Corporation is in the proces of strengthening its call centre services.
Recently, it launched a 24x7 helpline to address complaints regarding sexual harassment. A complainant will be given a complaint number with the help of which he or she can track the status of the complaint, said the official.
The complaints at the call centre mostly pertain to conductors’ apathy in cases of men occupying seats reserved for women and rude conduct of the conductors themselves, a staff at the call centre said.
The Corporation officials have already been conducting surprise checks on buses, while interacting with women commuters to know their concerns. The BMTC personnel are also being sensitised on gender issues.
They are being tutored to be cordial with the passengers, whether male or female.