Abuse & harassment just part of job at Gurugram toll plaza where staffer was dragged by SUV

Operators at the Gurugram toll plaza say they decided to hire women because they believed people would not misbehave with them. They were wrong.

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Gurugram/New Delhi: When an employee at the Kherki Daula toll plaza in Gurugram was dragged eight kilometres on an SUV bonnet Saturday by a driver who didn’t want to pay up, it was just an extreme manifestation of harassment suffered by the staff everyday.

Around 20 women and 200 men have been hired to manage the Kherki Daula toll plaza on the 25-lane Delhi-Gurugram highway by a private company, Skylark, for Millennium City Expressway Private Limited, the concessionaire operating the expressway.

Each of them has their own story to narrate, of how they learnt to ignore abuse from irate drivers and just get on with the job.

Sunita, 22, got her first taste of the rage a year ago, when a driver threw an expletive at her when she asked him to pay the toll.

“He abused my mother and called me a slut,” Sunita, who goes only by her first name, told ThePrint Sunday, as she collected toll from inside her box-size cabin. “I could not handle it. I broke down. I have never felt so insulted in my life.”

Sunita, the sole breadwinner for her mother and two college-going sisters since her father’s death, said she wanted to leave the job that very day, but her colleagues calmed her down. “It was my first job and I needed it desperately,” she added.

It took her three days to come out of that traumatic experience, and, a year down the line, Sunita has learnt not to get ruffled by such situations.

“After some time, the expletives stop registering,” said Dheeraj Kumar, a special duty officer. “I know I am doing my job. At times, when things get really messy, like they did Saturday, we call police.”

Two men, both residents of Gurugram, have reportedly been arrested for the Saturday episode. The attendant, who was also allegedly assaulted by the driver, survived the incident unscathed.

‘Giving it back’

Many of the young men and women at the toll plaza come from neighbouring villages in Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, while some come from as far as Maharashtra. In Gurugram, most of them live in tiny rooms provided by the company.

According to Kumar, while the staff hired at the managerial level are paid well, most juniors get around Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000 a month.

“Most of us come from poor families and are the sole breadwinners of our family. So, each of us finds our own way to cope [with the abuse],” said Soni Kumari, 21, a toll collector.

Her way, she told ThePrint, is to “give it back” to whoever abuses her. “Initially, I used to get intimidated. It was really stressful,” Soni said. “Then I decided that if somebody hurls expletives at me, I will return the abuse. It felt better after that.”

The repeat offenders

A senior official of Skylark, the private company that runs the toll operation at Kherki Daula, said most people who resorted to abuse when stopped at the toll plaza were “locals and lower-level policemen”.

“The locals create the most ruckus,” Rajender Singh Bhati, project head, told ThePrint.

“They take it as an insult if they are asked to pay the toll. After locals, it’s the lower-level policemen who harass our staff. The maximum number of complaints involve them,” he added.

According to Bhati, they daily handled eight to 10 cases of users refusing to pay toll and getting into an argument with the staff.

“At times they will park their vehicle in front of the toll counter and not budge, resulting in heavy traffic piling up,” he said. “At times like these, we don’t have an option but to let the violator go without paying toll.”

Bhati said they tried to handle the verbal abuse cases at their level. “Only when the matter turns serious do we call police. In a month, there are three-four cases where we have to call police,” he added.

‘Thought hiring women will help’

Operators at the toll plaza say they decided to hire women because they believed people would not misbehave with them. But reality hasn’t kept up with the reasoning.

“In fact, our women staff are the most vulnerable,” said Sushma Rao, toll plaza controller. “They face the maximum verbal abuse. I think this is the only toll plaza in India where such a high number of women staff are harassed by drivers reluctant to pay toll,”

Rao supervises a team of 30 women. “We give them five days’ training when they join, where they are taught how to handle difficult toll users and not get intimidated,” she said. “But we realise, in Haryana, this is not enough.”