‘Reckless’ driving charge to be investigated

The Alliance Owners and Public Transport (AOPT) has launched an investigation into claims from a passenger that the operator of a minibus which reportedly ran off the road was engaging in reckless behaviour.

Chairman of AOPT Roy Raphael told Barbados TODAY on Monday that while he has seen the complaint posted on social media and also the public’s reaction to it, he would be unable to comment on the incident until the investigation has been completed.

However, Raphael shared that the AOPT’s Public Service Vehicles (PSVs) Complaints Department which was established three years ago, had been reaping significant success, but has been temporarily halted due to a lack of funding.

“The association will launch an investigation into the matter. But as far as we are concerned there is not enough information for us to make any comment at this stage.

“We are hearing different things but we will ask our team to speak to persons to find out what they know and probably bring them to reconstruct the accident to see if we can see exactly what happened there.

“There would be negative comments coming from the public generally across the board because some members of the Barbadian community are not happy with the performance of some of the operators out there and it really needs to be looked at. We have been really working on getting things better,” he said.

The social media post which has been making rounds, appealed to the public to make the effort to stop catching yellow minibuses. The person that made the post described the experience of the bus running off the road as “terrifying”.

“Try to keep off these yellow buses everyone. We’ve been in the most frightening crash about 30 minutes ago. It was packed and we were holding on at the front. He was bombing it and two buses had stopped to have a chat side by side. Our bus’s brakes failed and went hurling over and down the dip opposite Beach Club in Holetown. Fortunately, I don’t think anybody was injured, but terribly shaken up. Terrifying experience,” the post read.

Raphael explained that two months ago, AOPT’s executive was forced to make the decision to put on hold, the operations of the complaints division which required $1000 per day to function effectively.

He said even though members of the public applauded the work of the division investigating complaints involving the behaviour of public service vehicle operators, arriving at solutions to some issues, the division was unable to obtain the necessary funds to keep it running.

Raphael said the department had the necessary equipment, two highly-trained investigators, and vehicles which they used to go out and investigate complaints around the island.

“Sometimes we get 25 to 30 complaints per day and this is across Barbados where we have to put vehicles out there to go on the road to investigate. We had two vehicles which we had to get rid of, one marked, and one unmarked.

“We were able to take information from the public, we would investigate and we would also ask them to come in if they wanted to give a written statement. Some of them would, some of them wouldn’t. The operators also make complaints about passengers who come on the bus and don’t want to pay, they don’t want to break the law, but verbal abuse comes to them. And when an operator refuses to stop anywhere other than a bus stop, they get cussed,” he said.

“But in the last complaints, we have been seeing calls coming from persons particularly on the Speightstown route where people are calling us about dragging on these routes, particularly on Fridays,” Raphael added.

Raphael said there has been a decline in complaints about operators drinking on the job, not wearing their masks, or inappropriately wearing their uniforms.

He said AOPT, which funded the PSV complaints department, has also been seeing a significant drop in members paying their subscription fees.

And while stressing that there are many psv operators on the road abiding by the road traffic rules, the spokesman said the authorities must seriously look at the entire system of public transport, including the over two dozen pirates operating illegally on the roads.

Raphael said there is a need for the Government to offer assistance to the PSV training academy to make it possible for more operators to be trained.
(AH)