On Tues­day I sur­vived a trau­mat­ic and very un­pleas­ant PTSC bus ride. The 5.30 pm lim­it­ed stop ar­tic­u­lat­ed bus to Ari­ma left City Gate with a full com­ple­ment of over 100 seat­ed and stand­ing pas­sen­gers. The trip was un­event­ful un­til, reach­ing the vicin­i­ty of Vem­cott, the bus dri­ver sud­den­ly turned the bus around and sped back to City Gate. De­spite the cries of the pas­sen­gers to "slow down," the dri­ver ig­nored us all and reached City Gate in a lit­tle un­der three min­utes. The ride back was so bad that the lat­ter half of the ar­tic­u­lat­ed bus was bounc­ing in the air and the pas­sen­gers with it. It was even more so for the stand­ing pas­sen­gers in­clud­ing my­self.

To our amaze­ment, the cause of this reck­less en­dan­ger­ment to all our lives was that the bus had left City Gate with­out fu­el. While be­ing re­fu­elled, a woman came off the bus and re­fused to get back on. She was al­so ex­treme­ly trau­ma­tised by the bus dri­ver's ac­tions. I am call­ing on Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj, new PTSC chair­man Dr Vin­cent Lasse and its gen­er­al man­ag­er, Sel­wyn Sylvester, to im­me­di­ate­ly launch an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this ter­ri­fy­ing event that, but for the grace of God, could have end­ed in a mas­sive tragedy. Un­der no cir­cum­stances must PTSC bus dri­vers, who are gen­er­al­ly quite skilled, be al­lowed to en­dan­ger the lives of their passen- gers.

Li­nus F Di­di­er

Mt Hope