By Pretty Chavango.
Zimbabwe. (News Of The South) – The Ministry of Youth, Indigenisation and Economic empowerment through the Zimbabwe Youth Council and the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure development through the Safety council of Zimbabwe are working jointly in an initiative to empower young women through training in driving skills.
In a move to open up opportunities for young women to take up driving as a profession, a platform has been created for young women to have driving licences which are a right to every Zimbabwean above the age of 16.
The objective of this empowerment programme is to contribute to the reduction of road carnages by producing fully trained female drivers, who have been proved to be more cautious on the road than their male counterparts. Above all it seeks to present an opportunity for women to be experienced drivers.
These young women will be required to purchase a highway code to be used in training sessions which will be conducted for some days to ensure that each student fully understands the rules and regulations of the road in a one on one 8 hour interaction with the delegated tutors and subsequently obtain the provisional driving licence through the Vehicle Inspection Department (VID).
Acting Economic Development manager of the ZYC Mr Sungano Chisina stated that to date more than 1650 young women have benefited in all the 10 provinces with Mashonaland East and Harare topping the list. “the pass rates however range between 20% and 40% trained with higher pass rates recorded in towns “, he said . Recommendations coming through are that the trainees need more than the scheduled 4 days of training and preferably smaller groups for a good teacher-student ratio.
“The programme has been decentralised to provinces our provincial managers, the Traffic Safety Council has also given us a schedule when their officers are free to train”. Mr Chisina also went on to say that this programme is still open to women between the ages 16-35, and will be able to participate upon registration at the ZYC offices.
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