The South African E-hailing company, Bolt, has launched a new system that allows women to order their taxi services that are only driven by female drivers.
With the ‘Gender Based Violence’ (GBV) being a nation wide concern in South Africa, the manager of Bolt, Gareth Taylor and his team have worked on this new way of transporting women through their taxi services. Gareth Taylor said “Gender-based violence is a reality that women across South Africa contend with every day. Women-only shouldn’t be needed, but unfortunately, it is.” The new updated system allows for women to request for cars without male drivers seeing their requests and the price will still remain the same without any extra charges.
The introduction of this service was done in November 2020 in a few cities in South Africa which are Rustenburg and East London but it is now currently running in more cities which are Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban, Pietermaritzburg, Port Elizabeth, Mthatha, Polokwane, Thohoyandou, Mbombela and Emalahleni.
To protect both women during rides, Bolt has installed security screens in the vehicles driven by female drivers and by an app integrated by the SOS emergency button as well as many more safety features by the company.
Rufaro Sihle Muyanga.
