PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government on Friday handed over 14 ‘pink buses’ to girls colleges across the province after struggling to manage the women-only bus service in two districts for more than three years.
Special assistant to chief minister on higher education Kamran Khan Bangash on Friday handed over the buses to 11 girls’ degree colleges, a commerce college, and Mardan Women University.
Mr Bangash said the buses would be on the roads within a week.
He said the higher education department had asked Chief Minister Mahmood Khan for those buses, which had been given away to the girls’ colleges in Dera Ismail Khan, Mardan, Nowshera, Swabi and other districts.
CM aide says 45 buses to be procured for ex-Fata girls’ colleges
The chief minister’s aide said the buses were meant for a women-only bus service in Abbottabad and Mardan districts but the idea couldn’t materialised due to the disinterest of bus operators.
He said the buses had gathered dust in parking lots for good part of more than three years.
Mr Bangash said the government had ordered the procurement of 45 buses, which would be provided to the girls’ colleges of merged tribal districts.
He added that 40 colleges were being set up in the merged tribal districts.
The CM aide said seven law colleges would be established in the province.
Fourteen pink buses costing around Rs100 million were donated to the government by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) in May 2018 for the launch of women-only bus service. The UNOPS had received them from the Japanese government.
Several bus stops were established in both districts for the service.
The buses gathered dust at the parking lot for around a year first due to a controversy over the project’s handover to TransPeshawar, the operator of Peshawar Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and later due to a lack of interest among transport companies.
In May 2018, the then chief minister, Pervez Khattak, ordered the plying of the pink buses on the BRT tracks and thus, causing a crisis at the TransPeshawar. Several executives, including the company’s board chairman, resigned after irate Khattak removed its chief executive over refusal to run these buses on BRT tracks.
However, TransPeshawar struggled until May 2019 to launch the service.
The service was closed down a couple of months after its launch in both districts as the bus operator and TransPeshawar engaged in litigation over differences.
The operator said the women preferred to travel with male family members due to cultural barriers, so buses were mostly unoccupied.
After struggling with the women-only bus service for around three years, the transport and mass transit department announced in Feb this year to close down the project and hand over the buses to the girls’ colleges across the province.
Published in Dawn, September 4th, 2021