Brightly coloured pink buses, seldom seen on the roads of Karachi, are like a fragile thread suturing the wounds borne by women after years of transport woes and facing harassment on the city’s streets.
Emblazoned with logos of various brands, and loaded with women belonging to different classes and ethnicities, the dedicated bus service, comprising 18 vehicles only runs on three main routes — Model Colony to Merewether Tower, North Karachi to Korangi and Numaish Chowrangi to Sea View Beach.
The pink bus fleet is part of a public initiative called the Sindh Peoples Intra District Project launched in 2021. The two parties involved in this project are the Government of Sindh (GsS) and the National Radio and Telecommunication Corporation (NRTC).
The latter is the contractor responsible for the maintenance and operations of the buses and their depots. Meanwhile, the GOS provides the subsidies and logistical support to run the project.
Sitting on a bench at a footpath, parallel to Shahrea Faisal — the major thoroughfare connecting almost all of Karachi — was Wajahat Fatima who has commuted via the pink bus every day since its launch last year.
Putting aside the book she had been reading for the past hour while waiting for the bus, she stood up with great difficulty and stepped closer to the edge of the footpath once the bus was in sight.
The bus driver parked close to the edge of the footpath as the conductor came out to assist Fatima climb the bus. She sat on one of the two seats allocated for disabled persons. “Ever since I got into an accident last year there has been constant joint pain in my leg,” said Fatima, who works at a shipping company.
She took out a small portable stool from inside her bag and set it on the floor to rest her leg on. Although it occupied space, none of the women standing inside the crowded bus seemed to complain; rather they made space for her.
“The bus has been a blessing for women like me who need to sit down, men in the other bus service [red bus] hog up the seats for the disabled and refuse to stand up, even though they are able-bodied,” she lamented.
While Wajahat chooses to wait for the bus, most women board any available.
“All the buses, whether pink, green, red, or white, provide the same comfort. It doesn’t matter which bus you get on, as long as you don’t have to wait on the bus stand for too long — that gets very uncomfortable,” Zareen Khan noted, as she awaited a........