Yvonne Webb

Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj has ex­pressed sup­port for PTSC dri­vers who yes­ter­day re­fused to dri­ve de­fec­tive bus­es. He chas­tised them, how­ev­er, for their ap­proach to the prob­lem and said they should have raised the mat­ter with their su­per­vi­sors. Ma­haraj pledged to do every­thing pos­si­ble to deal with de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of PTSC bus­es and fa­cil­i­ties. For the sec­ond day yes­ter­day, most of the 80-odd dri­vers at the PTSC ter­mi­nal, King's Wharf, San Fer­nan­do, re­port­ed for du­ty and drove de­fec­tive bus­es to the garage. This left scores of pas­sen­gers, in­clud­ing pen­sion­ers, school­child­ren and the dis­abled strand­ed. On­ly dri­vers with "road­wor­thy ve­hi­cles" kept the sched­ule.

The work­ers, who are mem­bers of the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union (TI­WU), said they were will­ing to work but did not want to put them­selves or their pas­sen­gers at risk. They said the po­lice had warned that they would be held re­spon­si­ble for dri­ving ve­hi­cles with de­fec­tive tyres, brakes, park and ID lights and miss­ing fire ex­tin­guish­ers. The dri­vers al­so com­plained about oth­er prob­lems, in­clud­ing stalled wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, in­ad­e­quate fa­cil­i­ties and health and safe­ty is­sues. "We are still work­ing for 2008 salaries...Our ne­go­ti­a­tions have stalled," a work­er said. "Our en­gi­neer­ing de­part­ment is in a mess and should be shut down...There are ladies work­ing in that de­part­ment and there are no wash­rooms or chang­ing rooms for them."

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Ma­haraj agreed that the dri­vers must give con­sid­er­a­tion to the lives of those in their charge as well their own lives. How­ev­er, he said: "They should go through the process to bring it to the at­ten­tion of their su­per­vi­sor or op­er­a­tions man­ag­er rather than sen­sa­tion­al­is­ing the is­sue." "If they don't get sat­is­fac­tion, then they can go to the chair­man of the board Dr Vin­cent Lasse or come to me," he said. "I am ac­ces­si­ble and they know of my in­ter­est." Ma­haraj said he had asked Lasse to set up an en­gi­neer­ing task force to ag­gres­sive­ly pur­sue a pro­gramme of re­pair and ren­o­va­tion of bus­es.

He said bus­es were now be­ing re­paired at a faster rate, but some re­pairs were quite cost­ly and they don't have the bud­get for that. "We have to pri­ori­tise," he said. With re­spect to the ne­go­ti­a­tions, Ma­haraj said he met with TI­WU pres­i­dent Ronald Suther­land about one and a half weeks ago to get a sta­tus re­port and had since ad­vised his chair­man to ex­pe­dite that mat­ter. "The lev­el of de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of bus­es and fa­cil­i­ties did not hap­pen overnight," said Ma­haraj, who blamed the sit­u­a­tion on "puni­tive ne­glect by those who held of­fice be­fore." He added: "But one can­not rem­e­dy ne­glect of a decade with­in a few months. "I give the com­mit­ment that we will rem­e­dy as much as pos­si­ble with the re­sources we have, but it can­not be done overnight."