DOHA: Public buses in Qatar will now have a few seats in front reserved for women.
Under the directives of Minister of Transport, H E Jassim Seif Ahmed Al Sulaiti, Mowasalat, the state-backed company that runs the Karwa buses and taxis, has announced its decision to reserve the front seats for women passengers, Al Sharq reported.
The decision has been implemented in all large buses used for public transport. Currently, very few women and families use public buses in the country, that are used largely by expatriate single workers. The ministry is also planning to introduce a unified ticketing system for all modes of public transport in the country, said the daily. Mowasalat operates about 200 buses with about 30,000 people using them daily, according to data released by the company a few months ago.
Complementing its decision to reserve seats for women in buses, Mowasalat is planning a media and publicity campaign to make the public aware of the new service. Besides newspaper announcements, stickers and posters will be displayed on public buses introducing the service. There will be separate stickers inside buses to help passengers easily identify the reserved seats.
Mowasalat recently added 55 low-floor buses to its fleet with special facilities for people with disabilities. The buses have been equipped with special seating arrangements for the disabled and swiping machines where they can use their Karwa smart cards.
Besides public buses, Mowasalat also operates more than 2,500 school buses serving a number of Independent schools across the country. SEC has installed tracking devices in school buses to monitor and record movement to ensure children’s safety.
In a related report, the daily said that the Ministry of Public Transport is working to lay down new laws and regulations governing different means of transport in the country.
A unified ticketing system will be introduced for public transport while new rules and regulations will be in place to organise heavy transport, aviation system and air surveillance.
Meanwhile, Karwa Automative, a joint venture between Qatar and Oman, has completed the final design for its proposed bus assembling unit being set up in Oman.
The company is working on a plan to implement the project soon, said the daily. The QR584m project is a joint venture between Mowasalat and Oman Investment Fund. The assembling and manufacturing unit will be built on an area of 100,000sqm in the Industrial Area of Mudhaibi province of Oman. The capacity will be 2,000 buses per year, which will include school buses, small, medium and large buses to be marketed in GCC countries, especially in Qatar and Oman, according to earlier reports.
The Peninsula
