For the last decade the ride-hail­ing in­dus­try has been tak­ing over stan­dard taxi ser­vices, yet many is­sues have not been ad­dressed. The sad truth is that there are dozens of doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and sex­u­al as­sault for both reg­u­lar taxi ser­vices and ride-hail­ing com­pa­nies. From nu­mer­ous lo­cal tragedies to mil­lion dol­lar law­suits cur­rent­ly be­ing filed against gi­ants, it is ob­vi­ous to see that re­gard­less of lo­ca­tion or com­pa­ny the cur­rent mod­el is sim­ply not work­ing when it comes to safe­ty for women. As we ac­knowl­edge Sex­u­al Aware­ness Month, the XX team met up with An­na Marie Lee who is one of the cus­tomer ser­vice rep­re­sen­ta­tives from PinkCab to find out more about their taxi-ser­vice for women and chil­dren.

PinkCab of­fi­cial­ly launched its ser­vices on Feb­ru­ary 8 with the mis­sion to pro­vide a safe, mean­ing­ful al­ter­na­tive for all women who want to earn ex­tra in­come as dri­vers and al­so to pro­vide a se­cure, com­fort­able ex­pe­ri­ence for all women and their chil­dren that re­quire trans­porta­tion. The idea be­hind PinkCab came in­to ex­is­tence over a year ago. Since then, fo­cus has been placed on build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty of like-mind­ed peo­ple for the sole pur­pose of em­pow­er­ing women on the road and pro­vid­ing a se­cure al­ter­na­tive for trans­porta­tion with­in T&T, the Caribbean and the rest of the world.

With the pri­ma­ry goal be­ing safe­ty, PinkCab en­sures that all dri­vers are per­son­al­ly vet­ted and se­lect­ed through an in-per­son in­ter­view. All pas­sen­gers are ver­i­fied through the app and back­ground checks, be­fore their ac­count is ac­ti­vat­ed. Pas­sen­gers are pro­vid­ed a spe­cial code in or­der to ver­i­fy that the dri­ver who re­turns to pick them up is the one they reached through the PinkCab app. Up­on in­di­ca­tion of any prob­lem, PinkCab will im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact the rid­er or dri­ver to re­solve is­sues or dis­patch a pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny. The PinkCab SOS but­ton and hot­line gives the op­tion to con­tact our 24/7 emer­gency ser­vice, the po­lice, or a pre­de­ter­mined emer­gency con­tact who will im­me­di­ate­ly re­ceive a text mes­sage in­di­cat­ing that you do not feel safe in your ride and in your lo­ca­tion.

Women and chil­dren are the main tar­get and, as a re­sult, all ser­vices are cus­tomised and tai­lored to­wards their needs. This is a move­ment of in­clu­sion, not ex­clu­sion. To sim­ply put it, in or­der to have a nur­tur­ing, se­cure and re­li­able ser­vice, it needs to be fo­cused on its mis­sion.

With se­cu­ri­ty be­ing the foun­da­tion of their ser­vice, em­pow­er­ment and com­mu­ni­ty are its cor­ner stones. There’s no in­tent to stop at sim­ply es­tab­lish­ing the most se­cure ride-hail­ing op­tion for women. Rather they aim to solve is­sues that have been plagu­ing the ride-hail­ing in­dus­try as a whole and pro­vide a unique en­vi­ron­ment for women to not on­ly earn, but al­so grow and flour­ish while do­ing it.

Their dri­ver base are women that jug­gle mul­ti­ple jobs or are stay-at-home moms that need to pro­vide for their chil­dren - PinkCab has start­ed build­ing a net­work of part­ners which can make their life eas­i­er. For per­son­al growth, this means ac­cess to self-de­fence and first aid cours­es and a range of self im­prove­ment train­ings. For their cars, it means dis­counts at body and tyre shops, spe­cial in­sur­ance pack­ages and free wi-fi in their cars. On a day to day ba­sis this al­so means ac­cess to se­lect­ed shops and restau­rants, as well as spa and re­treat cen­tres where our com­mu­ni­ty, pas­sen­gers in­clud­ed, can get dis­counts and re­wards.

While PinkCab was born out of the need for a so­lu­tion on pub­lic sex­u­al ha­rass­ment, it is grow­ing be­yond that by the day. A new ar­ray of ser­vices that will fo­cus on spe­cial needs are be­ing planned: a ser­vice for women with dis­abil­i­ties; a ser­vice aimed at the el­der­ly and ac­com­pa­ny­ing them in their dai­ly tasks as well as spe­cial pack­age op­tions that fa­cil­i­tate every­day com­mut­ing or the sim­ple act of tak­ing your child to and from day­care at an af­ford­able price.

What keeps them mo­ti­vat­ed and ex­cit­ed is the fact that peo­ple res­onate with their cause, they have been sup­port­ed by the Ger­man em­bassy in T&T for In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day and re­ceived amaz­ing feed­back from dif­fer­ent or­gan­i­sa­tions that sup­port women’s rights and are com­plet­ing more and more rides for sat­is­fied pas­sen­gers every day. In telk­ing to us Ms Lee she quotes from one of her favourite singers, Dionne War­wick, “Healthy chil­dren are born from healthy, re­spect­ed, well-nour­ished and ed­u­cat­ed moth­ers and it is im­per­a­tive that they have a voice in the de­ci­sions which af­fect them. If you em­pow­er a moth­er and let her have her say to­wards a pover­ty-free fu­ture, the pos­i­tive im­pact this would have will be im­mense.”

Lee tells us that most of all at PinkCab they want to give peace of mind and fo­cus on en­hanc­ing the pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ence. She says “while we can­not sin­gle-hand­ed­ly ex­tin­guish every­thing bad that is hap­pen­ing on and off the road, we can set a pos­i­tive ex­am­ple and show that with fo­cus on se­cu­ri­ty and ben­e­fits, a com­mu­ni­ty that shares the save val­ues and aims to grow stronger by the day can emerge.

PinkCab is ul­ti­mate­ly a sis­ter­hood. We learn and adapt to every new dri­ver on board, we lis­ten and try to en­cour­age every idea that comes forth and we ad­here to our mis­sion is a bet­ter fu­ture for all women.”