Hyderabad Software Exports Association (HYSEA) today announced the launch of 'Share a Seat' campaign to encourage people to share the vacant seats in their vehicles with people, who are waiting at bus stops, company gates or walking in scorching sunlight.
In August last year, the HYESA had launched a 'Car-Free Thursday' initiative in Cyberabad, the IT industry hub of Hyderabad, to motivate IT/ITeS sector employees to use public transport, go for car-pooling and start using cycles or walking to office.
"We were successful in building awareness among the citizens. However, the critical thing now is to create a framework that incentivises more and more people to practice this regularly. It's a big challenge in summer to promote walking or cycling commute. Therefore, we started the 'Share a Seat' campaign," HYSEA president Ramesh Loganathan said.
"We launched the campaign on a pilot basis in the recently organised HYSEA Annual Summit and received a good response from people. Now, we are planning to get a dedicated team in addition to the volunteers at least for one year," Loganathan said in a release.
The 'Car-Free Thursday' initiative, undertaken by HYSEA in association with Telangana Transport department, Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation, Society for Cyberabad Security Council and some other organisations, aimed at reducing the number of vehicles on road to free up space and also solve parking problems in various IT companies.
The first phase of the initiative focused extensively on building awareness and enlisting volunteers.
In addition to traffic junction activities and corporate outreach, a sub-campaign 'One Lakh Hands' has been initiated, which is working on sensitising motor-vehicle users by way of letters from one-lakh school children.
Now, discussions are on to introduce an effective Public- Private mechanism in place to sustain the movement, the release said.
"A roadmap has already been prepared and submitted to the authorities concerned in the Government to initiate the necessary steps to drive this campaign effectively," it said.
"We continue to create awareness on car pool and share the seat campaigns among IT companies," said Bharani Aroll, Secretary - Society for Cyberabad Security Council.
