KSRTC’s women bus drivers for SWIFT will soon be ferrying commuters around Thiruvananthapuram Premium

Four women in Kerala are training to drive KSRTC’s new fleet of 163 electric SWIFT buses as part of KSRTC’s mission to empower women.

Anila S from Nellimoodu in Thiruvananthapuram has been in the driver’s seat of Mar Ivanios Bethany Vidayalaya’s school bus for more than 18 months. When she saw an announcement calling for women drivers in Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC), she did not think twice before applying for the post.

She is now one of the four women being trained at KSRTC’s Staff Training Centre (STC) at Attakulangara in Thiruvananthapuram. The other three are Jisna Joy C and Sreekutty KM from Thrissur and Sheena Sam from Nilambur. They will be deployed to drive a new fleet of 163 electric buses under the KSRTC. The SWIFT buses were introduced in 2022.

V Vinod Kumar, Principal of the STC, says KSRTC’s aim is to empower women. “Society has a tendency to look askance at women in certain professions. Biju Prabhakar, Chairman and Managing Director of KSRTC, is keen on removing those blinkers. When women became conductors in KSRTC buses, there was a buzz. Now, it has become an everyday sight. We are sure it will be the same with these new recruits too,” he says.

At present, KSRTC has only one woman driver, VP Sheela, posted at Muvattupuzha bus depot. She is now part of the team training the four women.

All four of the trainees have a licence to drive heavy vehicles.  Anila, Jisna and Sheena are from families who own vehicles; they are motor heads who learned driving to be independent and earn a living.

Sreekutty lost her father about three years ago and was helping her mother run a chayakkada (an eatery) at Anthikkad in Thrissur when a family friend motivated her to apply for the job.

Thirty-two-year-old Anila says confidently she is looking forward to navigating the city’s roads by August. Her husband, Sherinlal, taught her to learn to drive a two-wheeler after their marriage. Soon, she acquired the license to drive a four-wheeler and followed it up with a heavy vehicle licence.