Hong Kong woman hired by Citybus is city’s first female bus driver from ethnic minority group
- Farzana, 46, is part of growing number of women from ethnic minority groups joining company, which is pushing for greater diversity in its hiring
- Job applicants to Citybus from ethnic minority backgrounds in 2023 increased by 15-fold from previous year
A 46-year-old Hong Kong woman has become the city’s first – and so far only – female franchised bus driver from an ethnic minority group, after joining Citybus’s ranks last autumn.
Farzana is part of a growing number of women from ethnic minority groups joining the bus company, which is pushing for greater diversity in hiring, according to a general manager (people and culture) Roger Wong Wai-yip.
Wong said the number of applicants to the company from ethnic minority backgrounds in 2023 had increased by 15-fold from the previous year, while the number of female applicants for drivers from those groups had jumped 60 per cent.
Farzana began driving routes between Tuen Mun and other districts after receiving her licence last September. She told the Post she enjoyed her job despite hearing a few passengers’ unpleasant talk about her ethnicity and “skin colour”.
“They think I don’t know Cantonese, but I know what they are talking about,” Farzana said in fluent Cantonese. “Sometimes they look at me with a surprised expression and say, ‘wow, an Indian woman’.”
Farzana is among 200 female bus captains with the company, or 5 per cent of its total of 4,000 drivers. The company currently has about 200 openings for drivers.
A mother of a 19-year-old daughter and 22-year-old son, Farzana said she was inspired to apply for the job after seeing another woman “of a small build” behind the wheel of a doubler-decker bus last year.
