In a significant move to honour its labour force, Allied ICD Services Ltd made Ms Yogita Raghuvanshi, India’s first lady truck driver, as the Chief Guest of the 2019 May Day ceremony held at Durgapur recently.
Ms Raghuvanshi, who hails from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, and has been driving multi-axle vehicles for over 15 years, is a single mother of two children and is fluent in Hindi, English, Gujarati, Marathi and Telugu. She shared her story of becoming a truck driver and urged all drivers to take care of their health. She shed light on the dangers associated with drunken driving and with tampering of fuel. She firmly told the drivers to respect themselves first and to take pride in being called a driver. The audience gave her a standing ovation for her inspirational speech.
On this occasion, Mr Pramod Kumar Srivastava, PDP Group’s Director & CEO, thanked Ms Raghuvanshi for specially coming to Durgapur to attend the event. He requested more logistics companies to come together and play a role in felicitating drivers as they are often neglected despite their invaluable contributions to the trade. Mr Srivastava congratulated the transport department for maintaining a completely digital driver and trailer management software.
The May Day ceremony was attended by over 350 invitees. Rev. Doctor Franklin Menezes, Executive Director, Seva Kendra Kolkata, and Mr Stephen Gonsalves, Manager, Sambandh Project, also graced the event. Mr Avishkar Srivastava, PDP Group’s Strategic Planner, explained the various initiatives taken for the drivers during the past year, such as: cloud-based digital profile of drivers and their families, digital leave and attendance software for drivers, online storage of driver documents, videos taken of each driver after an accident, educational assistance provided to driver’s children, etc.
Allied ICD Services is an AEO-certified Custodian of ICD Durgapur. The ICD has been operational since 2006 and is a part of The PDP Group. The Group has over 130 trailers and over 150 drivers, said a release.
