LAHORE: Around 70 helmeted women gathered on The Mall on Sunday for a motorcycle rally. The women rode their bikes from Alhamra Gate on the Mall to Kashmir Road, Edgerton Road, and returned to the starting point. The rally was organised for women who had completed a 15-day course arranged by the Punjab government as part of their Women-on-Wheels (WoW) project.

The Punjab Chief Minister’s Special Monitoring Unit (SMU) on Law and Order and City Traffic Police had jointly trained the women at City Traffic Police Driving School in Thokar Niaz Baig.

Austrian Ambassador Brigitta Blaha and prominent lawyer Asma Jahangir also participated in the rally. Danish Ambassador Helen Neilson, American Consul General in Lahore Zachary Harkenrider, UN Women Country Representative Jamshed Qazi, prominent motorcyclist from Singapore Juvena Huang, Provincial Minister for Population Welfare Zakia Shahnawaz, Minister for Women Development Hameeda Waheeduddin and SMU’s Salman Sufi also attended the event.

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif announced that about 1,000 pink scooters would be given to working women and students at a 50 per cent subsidised rate under the WoW project.

The programme would be implemented from the International Women’s Day. The chief minister said that the project would focus on women under 40 to encourage the next generation to join the national development efforts. A traffic police spokesman said that more than 150 women had completed training at their driving school.

He said the training plan was designed to enable the women to acquire the riding skill in a few weeks.

Published in Dawn, January 11th, 2016