More toilets. More female cops. More public transport at night. Well-lit roads. Internal complaint committees that are not just showpieces.

Sanjay Roy, the lone convict in the RG Kar rape-and-murder case, will either be sentenced to death or life imprisonment on Monday. But if justice means women’s safety, there is a long road ahead, several working women told Metro.

Dipta Ghosh, 31, drives an app cab for a living. She is on the road for around 10 hours a day.

She dreads the need to relieve herself. “There is an acute shortage of public
pay-and-use toilets that are usable. Most of them are dirty and stinking. I can think of only a couple that are clean. They are in south Calcutta. I am so scared of nature’s call that I try to drink as little water as possible when I am out on the road,” said Ghosh, who lives in Bansdroni and has been driving for close to three years.

The lack of enough female cops on the road also bothers Ghosh.

“I can still see policewomen on the roads during the day. But after dark, there are hardly any. I can see civic volunteers and male cops. But the presence of women police personnel instils more confidence in women like myself, who have to be on the road for work,” she said.

Moumita Naskar, 46, caregiver to an ailing 74-year-old woman in Deshapriya Park, leaves her employer’s home around 8pm. She cannot leave until another caregiver for the night arrives.

By the time she reaches Dhakuria, where she lives in a colony across the railway tracks, the road is empty. “The lanes are dark and scary. I walk past gambling and drinking dens. Proper lighting can be really helpful,” she said.

Naskar is also troubled by the lack of buses at night. “Changing autos means having to spend more. But there is no other option on most days,” she said.

Naskar works for an agency that supplies ayahs, nurses and domestic workers. “I have been doing this job for more than 15 years. I have been to several parts of south Calcutta. The sharp decline in the number of buses is striking. Before Covid, I would have to wait but knew that a bus would come and it did,” she said.

Satabdi Das, a government school teacher and feminist-activist, said the full implementation of the Sexual Harassment at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, also known as the POSH Act, must take place immediately.

“All institutions must comply with the establishment of internal complaints committees. The ICCs should not just be showpieces. They must be functional,” she said.

Her own workplace, a higher secondary school in South 24-Parganas, did not have one. It was set up after the RG Kar crime, following repeated demands of women employees.

“The committee has been set up but there is no external member. It is a clear violation of the norm. I have officially written to appropriate authorities on this,” said Das.

Earlier this month, two organisations emailed their demands on women’s safety to the chief minister. Strict implementation of the POSH Act, which means the establishment of internal complaints committees across institutions, was a common demand in both charters.