Under the scorching heat of summer, Ruth Maroto (32) from Ngangu high-density suburb in Chimanimani, pounds the pavements scrounging for clients to board her private taxi cab.
Six years ago her employer, the Zimbabwe Community Development Programme (ZCDP), was banned and its operations were halted in Chimaninmani and Chipinge districts.
ZCDP was one of 29 non-governmental organisations that were de-registered in in the country after they failed to submit “certain paperwork” to the local provincial administrators.
The crackdown on the NGOs sparked fears that the move was political after Zanu (PF) claimed that there were about 2,500 NGOs operating in Zimbabwe and some of them were pushing a “regime change” agenda ahead of the crucial 2008 elections.
As a result, Maroto, was unemployed and decided to try taxi driving when no other employment was available. Using her pension and other terminal benefits, including personal savings, she got her driver’s license and bought a Toyota Spacio in 2010, which she converted to a private taxi cab called Rue Taxis.
Abusive
But when she first started in this industry things were not easy for her at all. “I was competing against verbally abusive and energetic young male taxi drivers to get clients, so I had to fight hard,” she said in a recent interview.
“At one time I as called a whore as the male taxi drivers tried to discourage me. They felt challenged by my presence on the streets where we scrounged for clients. But I remained unbreakable as I fought my way through to live on in the industry,” she recalled.
Now her fortunes have turned around. She gave credit to a local hotel that has contracted her to ferry its clients to and from the hotel to their various destinations.
“The clients at this hotel have kept me busy. The tourists too have been giving me business. Surprisingly, most of my clients are males. I also want to thank the females, though they are fewer , as they have been giving my taxi cab first preference,” Maroto said.
Expand
“Each week I make about $200 dollars after deducting money for service and fuel which means I will earn $600 monthly as net profit. I am now a proud owner of a housing stand in Ngangu high density suburbs, with my new home at window level. Besides that, I also bought a car, which is still being shipped from Japan, which I’m going to convert into a taxi and expand my business,” she added.
She said she would recruit another female driver. “I have realised that over the years the country’s economy has been shrinking, leaving many women out of employment,” she said.
“Women are quite rare in terms of being taxi drivers. In business you always have to introduce something new if you want to survive. The taxi business is a money-spinning venture where you have to entrust your resources on trustworthy characters, and women drivers fit easily into that bracket,” she said, talking from her experience.
But she said that the job was not always an easy environment for women to work in.
Sexual favours
“We have to outdo each other on the streets as private taxi drivers, mostly against our male counterparts begrudging us for being more appealing to customers than them,” she explained. “On the other hand some of our unscrupulous clients at times pester us for sexual favours.”
One of her male clients, Hebert Rusike, said he felt safer being driven by women taxi drivers than by men. “Women are responsible drivers. Men often drive dangerously, eluding traffic cops while they also use foul language against passengers and often double as criminals,” said Rusike in an interview.
William Chiwandire, Mutare branch manager for Royal Insurance Company, said: “If you still don't believe that women are better drivers, just take a look around a few of your local insurance companies. There is a good chance that women are paying a lot less than men for their insurance.
"Based on our own statics as a company, the women have proven to be safer drivers than our men in terms of crashes, they have a much better record, and I think they are quite competent," he added.
Training
The Ministry of Transport has already rolled out training for young women drivers to enable them to seek employment in the public transport sector. For Maroto and many other female drivers, with government behind them, better days may be looming.
“I feel hey-days are approaching, with government backing women’s survival efforts in the driving industry,” she noted.
“My aim is to have a huge fleet of taxi cabs and I want to promote and employ more women drivers as a good opportunity to achieve a higher gender representation in this field,” she said.
“I want to go into partnership with banks and micro-finance houses so that I can borrow money and buy as many taxi cabs as possible. My main aim is to promote and strengthen women’s economic independence in the community, which means empowering them economically and promoting gender equality,” Maroto said.
She also plans to take the process of empowerment of women a step further by creating a cooperative of women taxi drivers in Zimbabwe.
Post published in: News