Govt to enforce reserved seats in public transport

KATHMANDU, March 17: “Will you please get up from this seat?” a lady asked Samip Adhikari, 20, when he was traveling by a micro bus a few weeks ago. Samip remained nonchalant at first and continued to gaze outside through the bus´s window.

After a brief pause, the women poked him again, her voice growing more irritable and bold. “Hello, you need to vacate the seat. See there, it is written, ´three seats reserved for women´,” she told him. [break]

As nobody had made such claims before, it was only natural for Samip to feel flabbergasted. “I was a little dumbfounded," says Samip. "Nonetheless, I left the seat as it was indeed reserved for women."

The government has made it mandatory that all public vehicles have some seats reserved for women, disabled and elderly people.

However, in practice, most of them never get to enjoy the privilege in absence of strict implementation of the rule.

“Women, disabled and elderly always face problems to use seats reserved for them because most people have no civic sense," Rachana Raj Bhandari, 35, a resident of Koteshwar, said. "Most people do not get up even when they see an elderly or a woman standing.”

In most public vehicles, there are seats meant for only women, disabled and elderly. But if one travels by public transport it becomes clear that the vehicle owners have marked the seats as reserved only to avoid penalties.

Vehicle and Transport Management Act-1992 directs the authorities to ensure comfortable travel for women, the physically challenged and elderly, categorizing them as a special class. Also, there is a provision in Public Transportation Code of Conduct-2010 outlines that ten percent of the total seats in a public transport be kept aside for such people.

But lack of proper enforcement and public awareness program by the authorities has left intended beneficiaries helpless.

Amid such situation, the Metropolitan Traffic Police Division launched a monitoring campaign a month ago to inspect whether public transportation vehicles in the capital have marked out some seats as reserved for women, disabled and senior citizens.

According to MTPD, it has monitored 4000 public transportation vehicles so far. “Almost all the vehicles had the reserved seats,” said Jagat Man Shrestha, a superintendent of police with MTPD.

The traffic police have said in the first phase of the campaign they have been warning public vehicles to mark out the reserved seats and asking the drivers and conductors to ensure that women, disabled and elderly get the seats set aside for them.

“Along with that, we have been urging both male and female passengers to vacate seats for those who need it more than they themselves,” said SP Shrestha.

He also said that the target groups should be more assertive of their rights when it comes to reserved seats. “Women should be more forthcoming to assert their rights,” he said.

Likewise, the Department of Transportation Management (DoTM) also admitted that the authority has been launching the monitoring campaign to ensure the implementation of reserved seats. But mere monitoring would not lead to the implementation of the law.

According to DoTM Director Devi Ram Bhandari, “We don´t provide road permit to public transport vehicles if they do not have reserved seats. But despite the effort, there has been no satisfactory implementation of the law.”

Director Bhandari said that as the issue is associated with the mind set of people, action from the authorities is not enough. “People from all walks of life, including media and rights activists, should join hands to spread awareness and bring change in the public attitude.”

He further said that the DoTM has to deal with a lot of other things and cannot concentrate on one issue all the time, therefore, public should help the authority in the implementation the provision for reserved seats on humanitarian grounds.

Stating that there have not been enough public awareness campaigns for the purpose, Director Bhandari said, “Visual footages are being prepared for television,” he informed.

The MTPD has also said that it would launch a month long awareness classes for drivers to teach them about traffic rules and discipline.

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At a time when the government authorities have failed to ensure that the reserved seats in public vehicles are available for the intended people, Dakshinkali Bus Sewa Samiti has initiated a campaign in coordination with an NGO, Youth Peer Education Network (Y-PEER), to guarantee that reserved seats are given to women, disabled and elderly in the buses plying Dakshinali-Kathmandu and Dakshinkali-Satdobato route.

Govt authorities positive about our campaign

Sangeet Gopal Kayastha, National Coordinator of Y-PEER

Why did you start the campaign?

We launched the campaign from March 11. We were already working on a project to develop six VDCs of Kathmandu Valley as model VDCs where rights of women are addressed properly. We decided to include this campaign as part of the same project after Dakshinkali Bus Sewa Samiti showed interest in funding the project.

What are you doing to ensure that the reserved seats are given to the intended people?

In the first phase, we placed orange seat covers in five vehicles with messages related to reserved seats. By the end of March, we will place such covers in 39 vehicles in the two routes. Likewise, we are also trying to educate bus staffs.

In the second phase, we will launch public awareness classes in all schools of the six VDCs where we will campaign on the issues of violence and gender equality. We will also encourage students to share what they learnt from the campaign with the elder members in their society.

Will your organization extend the project to other routes?

At present, we don´t have any plans to extend the project. We will run the campaign to ensure reserved seats for women in the two routes for two months. If the campaign bears fruit, we will extend it to other routes by coordinating with transportation committee and traffic police. The government authorities have already expressed support for the campaign.