Bhubaneswar: Women driving scooty and the car is not an unusual sight anymore on the roads of Odisha state. The government of Odisha has taken an initiative to encourage women to drive commercial vehicles and to break the male dominance in this area.
Arun Bothra, CMD, Odisha State Road Transport Corporation has said, a team of officers from CMD department have created the video. Moreover, all the actors in the video are from the department’s training institute.
For motivating and encouraging women in this vigorous profession, the Odisha State Transport Department has started a two-minute video campaign on International Women’s Day. This video portrays a situation how a young woman, driving a scooter, rescues a truck driver who is stuck in the traffic. When the truck driver is seen stuck in a traffic jam and cannot steer the vehicle woman sits behind the wheel and move out of the heavy vehicle from the traffic.
In this video Puja, Barik from Cuttack has played the role of the protagonist. She works as a trainer at Driver Training Institute at Chhatia in Cuttack. Speaking to the media Puja opined that she did not face any problem or feel any apprehension in process of shooting the video even though she did not have any acting experience before.
She again added that there are no such work or profession that can only be done managed by men and not by women. Nothing is really tough for women or should be predominantly done by men only. Women do not have to prove their skills or capacity in terms of their gender in any field whatsoever. It is only a matter of them being motivated and encouraged enough to come out by breaking the age-old gender stereotypes and face e challenges. The primary purpose of the video campaign is to encourage women to opt for jobs that are known as men’s cartels. She further messaged, ” I am a woman and I can drive any heavy vehicles like a truck or a bus as I have taken training for driving heavy vehicles”.
On the occasion of International Women’s Day, the video campaign spreads the message to all the women, they should live or pursue their dreams fearlessly respective of any kind of work/job it may be without being conscious or hindered.
Notably, in Odisha state, there has seen a substantial increase in the number of women drivers in the recent five years. While 25,086 women drivers have been issued driving licences in the state in 2017, this number has shown a hefty jump by 33 per cent to 33,666 in 2021.
-OdishaAge
