Delhi govt has good news for women looking to take up professional taxi driving

The Delhi government has launched a financial scheme to support women who want to take up driver training to become professional taxi drivers in future. Fifty per cent of the cost of the fee, which is approximately around ₹4,800, will be provided by the city's Transport Department for each woman participant. The training will be conducted at in-house government driving training centres at Burari, Loni and Sarai Kale Khan.

While 50 per cent of the cost will be borne by the government, it will invite fleet owners and aggregators to sponsor the remaining 50 per cent for women seeking driving employment in these companies. This will also set up a mechanism where trained women will get guaranteed jobs in these companies after completion of the training.

The city's Transport Department will soon issue an advertisement or public notice seeking Expression of Interest (EoI) from fleet owners or aggregators for the scheme as well as gauge the number of women who can be trained under this initiative. The primary aim of the government through this scheme is to help provide employment opportunities for women in the public transportation sector.

A Transport Department spokesperson told ANI that various women have expressed their interest and zeal to work as taxi drivers in the city to earn their livelihood.

In a separate development, Delhi Government had also relaxed the norms and eligibility criteria to recruit more women as drivers within its bus operations. It reduced the minimum height criteria from 159cm to 153cm and experience criteria for induction as bus drivers to one month for women applicants.

This initiative increased opportunities for women's employment within the combined fleet strength of approximately 7,300 buses in the Delhi Transport Corporation DTC and the Delhi Integrated Multi-modal Transit System.