The only female bus driver, for now in Myanmar

The only female YBS bus driver outshines her male colleagues in a profession dominated by men
Rude, vulgar, reckless male bus drivers have long been a bugbear for passengers on the Yangon Bus Service (YBS), but now regular commuters are fed up and calling for more women to be sat behind the wheel.

While the tide of public opinion may be steering towards a more gender-equal YBS workforce, the current reality couldn’t be more different.

Ma Myat Yi Mon is the YBS’s first and only woman bus driver. The 29-year-old former bus conductor has been driving the No 21 bus, which runs between Danyinkone in Insein township to Mawtin in Lanmadaw township since March. Dodging potholes behind the wheel of 15 tonne vehicle filled to the brim with complete strangers might sound daunting to most but having once worked in a garment factory, Myat Yi Mon has no problems performing under pressure.

“I was most stressed when I worked at the garment factory. Coincidently, I was offered a new role as a bus conductor by the owner of [the] No 48 line. I thought it was impossible for a woman to take this role. But I wanted to try,” Ma Myat Yi Mon said.

Yangon bus services have traditionally been dominated by male drivers and conductors. While women were employed as conductors on the No 17 line for a short period in the 1970s, it wasn’t until 2014 that Ko Tayoke Lay, part owner of the No 48 and No 124 lines, decided again employ about 25 women conductors.

Level heads

“Unlike women, men drink and chew betel nut; red spit stains the buses. They were even complaints about [men] harassing women passengers, pushing the passengers into the bus and dragging them from the bus at the wrong stops, in order to race with other buses,” Ma Myat Yi Mon said.

“Women are polite and kind. They do not annoy passengers. That’s why women conductors are loved and preferred,” she said.

Despite this, fatigue and irregular income saw the women conductors on lines No 48 and No 124 gradually disappear until only Ma Myat Yi Mon was left.

Foreseeing that conductors’ jobs would one day be eliminate, Ko Tayoke Lay urged Ma Myat Yi Mon to take up driving practice.

But Ma Myat Yi Mon had already been taking notes. She started learning to drive watching the other drivers while working as a bus conductor. The senior drivers used to teach her when they were waiting at the gas station. On weekends, bus owners would provide her with a bus to practice with at the Taw Win bus compound. Later, she asked for a driving teacher to train her in an industrial zone in Hlawgar, north of Yangon.

But before she could even put what she had learned into practice, male colleagues questioned her ability.

“After a lot of training, I was asked to accompany a school bus driver six months before I was to drive a YBS bus. The bus driver did not even allow me to sit in the driver’s seat, he thought that women are not daring enough and women are naturally reluctant to make quick decisions,” she said.

“He told me that I would never be a bus driver,” she said.

At night, she told Ko Tayoke Lay that she would resign from the job if he did not permit her to drive the school bus. Finally, she was allowed to.

No more training wheels

In her first day behind the wheel Ma Myat Yi Mon was involved in a minor accident with a car. “It was winter and a mist obscured the road. On top of all that, the roads were bad,” she said. But nothing serious came of it and Ma Myat Yi Mon became ever more determined.

After two weeks of driving the school bus, she took on the challenge of driving a YBS bus along the No 21 line.

“Since I began driving the YBS bus, passers-by and other drivers fix their gaze on me whenever my bus passes them. They looked interested and surprised,” she said.

“Over the past six months, I have gained many loyal customers. They choose my bus even if there are two or more No 21 buses at the stop. They say they want the bus with the woman driver.”
During a recent week-long break, passengers asked after Ma Myat Yi Mon, worrying that she had quit her job.

“They say women are patient, they do not fight for passengers and a bus with a woman driver is safer than a bus driven by a man,” she said.

Safety first

Bus drivers in Yangon are notorious for not following road rules, driving at breakneck speeds, and fighting for passengers. On July 7, a combination of all three resulted in tragedy in north Yangon.

Eyewitness accounts say the driver of the No 55 bus merged into oncoming traffic in an attempt to overtake another bus and collided head-on with the No 37, killing 10 passengers, and injuring over 40 others near Shwe Nyaung Bin shrine in Htaukyant, Mingaladon township.

Perhaps preemptively, the YBS’s governing body, the Yangon Region Transport Authority (YRTA), began a recruiting drive for women bus drivers in May, urging them to enrol in a three-week driver training course. With the second batch of graduates emerging soon, the third course is now open for enrollment. But so far, only one woman has applied.

YRTA training graduates will receive a monthly salary of K300,000 plus K150,000 worth of entitlements. Few bus companies offer a stable monthly wage, with many paying drivers a daily wage of K15,000 to K20,000 with small bonuses for completed routes.

“Women are patient. I hope employing more women can help reduce road accidents caused by reckless driving,” said Dr Maung Aung, secretary of the YRTA.

After seeing the success of Ma Myat Yi Mon, Ko Tayoke Lay plans to start a women’s only bus driver training course of his own.

“Men drive with greed and anger. They do not respect customers’ rights and they are undisciplined. I want to replace the men with women drivers,” he said.

Ma Myat Yi Mon concedes her male colleagues might have one advantage: men are able to answer nature’s call just about anywhere.

“I dare not drink too much water. There are no toilets anywhere.”

this article first appeared on : https://www.mmtimes.com/news/only-female-bus-driver-now.html