The tough driving trio at UNICEF

Caroline Boateng Apr - 12 - 2014 , 09:00

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is continuously making efforts to increase gender parity and inclusiveness. To that end, efforts have been made to attract women into the workforce of the organisation in general and into the traditionally male dominated roles such as Information Technology (IT), supply, drivers and emergency work, among others.

These efforts ensure that all vacancy announcements carry the statement: Qualified female candidates are especially encouraged to apply.

Giving equal employment opportunities to both men and women, UNICEF recruits the most suitable candidates for a job regardless of gender or geographical biases, in line with article 101.3 of the UN Charter, while endeavouring to achieve and maintain gender balance at all levels of the organisation.

UNICEF also supports new mothers with a flexi-time policy to promote breastfeeding and offers a generous four-month maternity leave for mothers and four weeks paternity leave for fathers.

Madam Pauline Asiama, Madam Grace Anima and Madam Faustina Serwaa Akoto are the three female drivers, among a dozen male counterparts, employed to provide transport services by the organisation, spanning the length and breadth of the country.

Driving tough

Whatever the terrain, the vehicle treads contemptuously, under the skillful manipulation of their feminine hands. Unmotorable roads are traversed with ease by the three female drivers of UNICEF who proudly, beautifully and skilfully drive the Toyota Land Cruiser vehicles in support of humanitarian work in Ghana.

The driving trio are a refreshing surprise, when seen behind the huge, tough and rugged four wheel drive vehicles.

They first surprise you with their looks because they are dressed to… drive!

With the appropriate make-up, fashionably cut shirts, ties and coats, the three are a refreshing sight any day.

Madam Asiama has driven for more than a decade and a half, with the two other female drivers having driven for about a decade, and they all told the Daily Graphic that they enjoyed their work tremendously.

All three, with class F licences, are qualified to drive goods-carrying vehicles, buses, coaches and heavy articulator vehicles.

How it started

Madam Asiama, who is in her fifties, is a retired soldier. While a Sergeant in the Army, she was recommended for the Military Academy Training School (MATS) by General Anyidoho in 2010.

She was the only female instructor there, and she gained expertise in the maneuvering of large military trucks.

She retired later into professional driving with private industries, such as Panbros Salt, and others in the Ofinso and Kumasi environs, before her current employment with the UNICEF.

For Madam Anima, she had a brief stint abroad after her secondary education, and later came back to join the Kingdom Transport, as a trainee driver between 2000 and 2001.

She was subsequently employed in 2003, and worked at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) for five months, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Ghana Health Service.

She was employed at UNICEF in 2009.

Madam Akoto, for her part, started as a private secretary at a communication centre at North Kaneshie. She heard about a recruitment exercise by Kingdom Transport for drivers and joined and surprisingly, she was employed.

Her ex-husband, who had no problem with her taking up the profession of driving, had been the one who told her about the recruitment exercise.

But her mother was skeptical, although in her youth, she had been a tomboy, riding a motorbike in the Duayaw Nkwanta Township, to the chagrin of many.

After working with Kingdom Transport, she worked with the UNHCR, Right to Play, and ended up at UNICEF.

It was previously difficult working as a professional female driver in a male dominated profession, she noted, however, with time, and with more women now at the wheels, men had learnt to accept female drivers.

Driving experience

“Driving is about understanding the language of the road,” Madam Asiama said.

“The road talks, it engages with all users. Your duty is to respond to the engagement or the conversation it is having with you. If you understand, you can go anywhere without a challenge,” she added.

She said the general perception about women professional drivers not being able to conceive and bear children was a myth as she had three children in the course of her work and they were all now grown up.

Her dream is to retire from UNICEF and set up a training school for drivers, particularly female drivers, to impart the knowledge she has acquired on the job.

Madam Anima described how male drivers endeavoured to overtake her whenever she (a woman), ‘dared’ to overtake them.

At other times when she was exercising caution on the road, she often heard the comments of other male drivers, “Gyama oye obaa,” (I take it, it is a woman!)

“It pains me when they degrade women professional drivers like that. With such comments, women must ensure more professionalism as drivers, and show the world that, “yes, we can!”, she said.

She recounted an experience she had with a male driver who stationed his car on a crossing.

She told him to go back to the driving school where he learnt how to drive, to which the driver shouted rudely back at her.

That was an irritating experience, but a pleasant one she remembers, was when she had to drive an official to the Afram Plains.

When they reached the town, all the residents came out to take a look at her because they were so amazed that a woman was driving such a big vehicle.

Faustina Serwaa Akoto recollected how a passer-by looked so long and intensely at her while walking that he fell into a gutter.

She also recalls the surprise on people’s faces when she had to change the tyre of her vehicle while on a trip when working with the UNHCR at Ho.

To ours with love

Madam Asiama advised female professional drivers to be bold, patient on the road and observant. "You must just be disciplined and you will succeed."

Madam Anima’s advice to her colleague drivers is also for them to be bold and professional.

She said drivers who did not stop at Zebra Crossings, or who stopped right on the crossing, unnerved her.

Madam Akoto believes that the profession she had entered into impacted positively on other younger females, who contemplated taking driving as a profession.

She admonishes female professional drivers to be on top of their game as they would daily encounter different kinds of drivers, some with no formal training in the job.

“Know that your job involves life and death, thus you must muster it,” she said.

She was passionate about the institution of a regular training school for commercial drivers who made life difficult for other drivers.

She said it was evident that some of them knew nothing about the road traffic regulations or common courtesies associated with driving.

Writer's email: caroline.boateng@graphic.com.gh