De­spite get­ting in­spec­tion cer­tifi­cates for bus­es, dri­vers from South Trinidad faced the wrath of the pub­lic af­ter they re­fused to take up du­ties on Thurs­day af­ter claim­ing many of the in­spect­ed bus­es still had ma­jor de­fects.

As they stood in the driz­zle at King’s Wharf, San Fer­nan­do, some of the com­muters ac­cused the dri­vers of try­ing to make the Gov­ern­ment look bad.

"Get to work. All yuh suf­fer­ing poor peo­ple in this coun­try," an irate woman shout­ed.

An­oth­er man said the dri­vers were mak­ing ex­cus­es.

How­ev­er, Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers’ Trade Union as­sis­tant branch sec­re­tary Ro­mesh Soni­lal said the pub­lic did not un­der­stand what the dri­vers were fac­ing. He said un­der the col­lec­tive agree­ment, dri­vers were li­able to pay any tick­et fines they get from po­lice or Li­cens­ing of­fi­cers. With the new changes in traf­fic fines and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the de­mer­it sys­tem, Soni­lal said dri­vers will now face hefti­er fines be­cause of de­fec­tive bus­es.

He claimed that some bus­es were in­spect­ed on Wednes­day and de­spite de­fects were still giv­en in­spec­tion pass­es.

"We want to know how this hap­pened. One dri­ver went over the pit and the Li­cens­ing of­fi­cer told him to come through, the bus­es al­ready pass in­spec­tion," Soni­lal claimed.

He not­ed that many of the bus­es from the San Fer­nan­do fleet had cracked wind­screens but were still giv­en in­spec­tion cer­tifi­cates. Soni­lal al­so claimed the en­gi­neer­ing de­part­ment of PTSC was not fix­ing the bus­es to the man­u­fac­tur­er's spec­i­fi­ca­tions.

"When the back glass is cracked they do not re­place the glass. They put plexy or a black steel sheet on the glass which ob­scures the dri­ver's vi­sion. Many of the bus­es are leak­ing and when the pas­sen­gers get wet they take out their frus­tra­tion on us," Soni­lal added.

He claimed on one oc­ca­sion a pas­sen­ger had to hold an um­brel­la over the dri­ver's head to pre­vent him from get­ting wet.

Soni­lal said they have com­plained about de­fec­tive bus­es for many years but now that the de­mer­it sys­tem was com­ing on stream they could no longer dri­ve de­fec­tive bus­es be­cause it could mean sus­pen­sion of their dri­vers' per­mits through no fault of theirs.

Shop stew­ard De­owanand Lack­han said he was not sur­prised the trav­el­ling pub­lic was un­sym­pa­thet­ic. He claimed dri­vers have been phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ed by un­hap­py com­muters.

"Many of the bus­es have shut down and the com­muters curse us for this. They do not un­der­stand that we do not fix bus­es, we just dri­ve the bus­es. Pas­sen­gers have slapped us be­cause they feel we are re­spon­si­ble for the bus­es be­ing de­fec­tive," Lack­han said.

In a let­ter is­sued on Thurs­day, PTSC deputy gen­er­al man­ag­er of Op­er­a­tions Bevon Cooke said all bus­es in the ac­tive fleet have been in­spect­ed and in­spec­tion cer­tifi­cates were housed with the cor­po­rate sec­re­tary. He said based on the PTSC's pol­i­cy and for in­sur­ance pur­pos­es, the in­spec­tion cer­tifi­cates have been sup­plied. He not­ed that the PTSC will al­so take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty if any dri­ver or con­duc­tor re­ceives traf­fic tick­ets for dri­ving bus­es which do not have in­spec­tion cer­tifi­cates.