For Pooja Kumari, a Delhibased female driver with Uber, driving is a passion. During the peak of pandemic in the capital city, this 24-year-old driver enrolled herself in Ubermedic, a service where drivers drove medical staffers to work along with patients including Corona patients.
“I was not scared, but maintained adequate safety measures,” says Pooja in a phone conversation with The Morning Standard. “The seats were sanitised, there was a plastic sheet between my seat and passengers’ seats, and I wore a mask all the time.” During the lockdown, Pooja’s duties included carrying cancer patients for chemotherapy and radiation, or nephro patients for dialysis; some of these treatments take hours to finish. It’s been three years since Pooja, a Jasola-Vihar resident, has joined the ridesharing company.
“While growing up, I always dreamed of having a bank job, but it didn’t work out,” she says. Unable to afford further education, she decided to become a professional taxi driver and signed up at a driving school. “Then I went on to work multiple jobs, including one at a Maruti factory,” she says. Sitting in the driver’s seat offers many, like Pooja, the financial independence that most women in their neighbourhood don’t enjoy.
“I have covered entire Delhi/NCR. I like to drive on wide roads which you hardly get in the city but, if lucky enough, you get to drive on the broad roads of Greater Noida, Delhi-Gurgaon Highway and around green patches in central Delhi. I simply love the roundabout at Connaught Place.” Pooja loves the positive comments coming from female passengers.
“‘Take whichever route you want. I know I am safe’, one female passenger told me, and admitted she had not come across a female driver even after using this service for many years.” If a passenger says something untoward, “which has rarely happened”, she discontinues talking to the passenger and just drop them at the set location. “Once a passenger assumed there was an issue at home, ‘otherwise why would you choose such a profession’, but I told them, ‘just like there are other jobs, driving is one of those too.’”