Pub­lic trans­porta­tion out of the south west­ern penin­su­la ground to a halt yes­ter­day af­ter two dozen bus dri­vers re­fused to take up du­ty say­ing the bus­es un­der their charge were de­fec­tive.

The dri­vers joined their col­leagues from the San Fer­nan­do branch who have vowed not to work un­less the Min­istry of Works put prop­er sys­tems in place to en­sure bus­es are road­wor­thy.

Shop stew­ard for the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Trade Union (TI­WU) Point Fortin Branch, Kervyn Ed­wards, said over the past month the En­gi­neer­ing De­part­ment of the PTSC in Point Fortin has been at a stand­still be­cause there is no me­chan­ic as­signed to work from 4.30 am to 1 pm. He said the first bus left Point Fortin at 3.30 am and it was im­por­tant to have a me­chan­ic on hand to in­spect the bus­es be­fore de­par­ture. He said there was on­ly a trainee avail­able who was not qual­i­fied to fix or in­spect the bus­es.

“That trainee comes for 7 am and we have a charge­hand who comes for 1 pm. This is not ide­al for us be­cause it means our en­gi­neer­ing sec­tion is non-func­tion­al,” Ed­wards said.

He ex­plained that the new tick­et fines and de­mer­it sys­tem were a cause of stress to many bus dri­vers who were un­will­ing to go out to work know­ing the bus­es were not road­wor­thy.

Ac­cord­ing to Ed­wards, on­ly three dri­vers re­port­ed for work by 7 am to op­er­ate a fleet of 27 bus­es. By 7 am, af­ter mak­ing their first trip, all three de­clared their bus­es de­fec­tive and stopped work.

“Our 5 am, 6 am and 8 am trips to Ica­cos nev­er pulled off. We can­not dri­ve bus­es which are not in­spect­ed and which are not road­wor­thy. We are not putting our lives and our pas­sen­gers lives in dan­ger,” he said.

Scores of peo­ple who wait­ed for the bus to go to Point Fortin to do busi­ness were left strand­ed yes­ter­day.

One of them, Ica­cos res­i­dent Sha­hee­da Ma­haraj said: “Nor­mal­ly pen­sion­ers go to Point Fortin to make their mar­ket and to change their pen­sion cheques. Peo­ple were so dis­ap­point­ed. This is not the first time the bus did not come.”

She said the res­i­dents sym­pa­thised with the dri­vers say­ing it was ridicu­lous that they were li­able to pay hefty fines when it was PTSC’s fault the bus­es were de­fec­tive.

“They need to get their act to­geth­er. It is ridicu­lous. Why do they suf­fer poor peo­ple in this coun­try,” Ma­haraj said.

Coun­cil­lor for Ce­dros Shankar Teelucks­ingh said the bus dri­vers’ con­cerns were le­git­i­mate and jus­ti­fied and it was im­por­tant for the Gov­ern­ment to en­sure the safe­ty of all pas­sen­gers by pro­vid­ing road­wor­thy bus­es.

“To­day there was no bus in Bam­boo, Chatham, Ica­cos and Ce­dros. The Works Min­is­ter should re­sign be­cause he has proven to be in­ca­pable of run­ning the trans­port sys­tem both on land and at sea,” he said.

Teelucks­ingh said bus trans­port was the on­ly mode used by the poor pen­sion­ers on the penin­su­la.

“Peo­ple use the bus to go to the whole­sale mar­ket to buy their lit­tle gro­ceries and to buy med­i­cine. It is not ac­cept­able that peo­ple have to suf­fer for pub­lic trans­porta­tion this way,” he said.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan said all bus­es were giv­en a thor­ough in­spec­tion be­fore be­ing is­sued with in­spec­tion cer­tifi­cates. He said if bus dri­vers be­lieved the cer­tifi­cates were is­sued with­out in­spec­tion, they should speak to the Trans­port Com­mis­sion­er.