Bus dri­vers at the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) are con­cerned about the ab­sence of in­spec­tion stick­ers and in­spec­tion cer­tifi­cates.

They say they fear that this can af­fect their per­son­al li­cens­es if de­mer­it points are giv­en by li­cens­ing of­fi­cers dur­ing ran­dom in­spec­tion ex­er­cis­es on the na­tion’s road­ways.

In a let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 20 ad­dressed to Bevon Cook, Deputy Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Op­er­a­tions, the Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers Union Branch Com­mit­tee lodged a for­mal com­plaint and gave PTSC sev­en days to re­spond to their con­cerns.

The let­ter stat­ed: “This mat­ter is of grave con­cern to us and we are, once again, re­quest­ing that you ad­dress it with ur­gency in an ef­fort to en­sure that no dri­ver falls vic­tim to the De­mer­it Point Sys­tem. Not on­ly is it in the in­ter­est of the dri­vers as it pro­tects their liveli­hood, but so too does it safe­guard PTSC from los­ing man­pow­er when em­ploy­ees are un­able to re­spon­si­bly ex­e­cute their du­ties due to the in­abil­i­ty to dri­ve.”

Ac­cord­ing to the amend­ed Mo­tor Ve­hi­cle and Road Traf­fic Act, Chap­ter 48:50, De­mer­it Points for Traf­fic Vi­o­la­tions and Of­fences, “Fail­ure to pro­duce a ve­hi­cle for In­spec­tion/Dri­ving a ve­hi­cle with­out a valid in­spec­tion stick­er or Cer­tifi­cate a to­tal of nine de­mer­it points will be added to the dri­ver’s li­cense.”

The Act al­so stat­ed that if the dri­ver ac­cu­mu­lates points which amount to the max­i­mum al­lot­ment he/she can be dis­qual­i­fied from dri­ving for a stip­u­lat­ed amount of time.

Con­cern­ing a spe­cif­ic bus, in a let­ter dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 21 by Cook, he stat­ed that the spe­cif­ic bus was in­spect­ed and passed by the Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion on Feb­ru­ary 20 this year.

Cook then went on to say that PTSC is await­ing the is­sue of the rel­e­vant cer­tifi­cate for dis­play on the unit.

“The PTSC as­sumes re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for any tick­et that may be is­sued as a re­sult of the cer­tifi­cate not be­ing dis­played as re­quired,” Cook said in that let­ter.

A bus dri­ver, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, told Guardian Me­dia that bus dri­vers took the “chance for the car­ni­val be­cause the work­ers have an oblig­a­tion and we de­mand PTSC to send out a let­ter say­ing they are tak­ing full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty if any­thing hap­pens to any of the bus­es/dri­vers.”

PTSC’s Chair­man Ed­win Good­ing, when con­tact­ed as­sured that the cor­po­ra­tion will not ask dri­vers to break the law.

Good­ing said the bus­es are in­spect­ed on an on­go­ing ba­sis to en­sure com­pli­ance.

“The bus­es to trans­port pas­sen­gers must be in­spect­ed by the Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty. Li­cens­ing Au­thor­i­ty does not is­sue “stick­ers” for bus­es like they do for cars, on­ly cer­tifi­cates. So the bus­es be­ing despatched on routes have been in­spect­ed,” Good­ing said.

He added that about 70 per cent have in­spec­tion cer­tifi­cates and the bal­ance have been in­spect­ed and are await­ing the is­sue of cer­tifi­cates.

Good­ing al­so as­sured that to pro­tect dri­vers, a let­ter from the PTSC is be­ing used as con­fir­ma­tion of this and has been is­sued to be dis­played on each of those bus­es.

“The prob­lem is when the bus­es are despatched the dri­vers are claim­ing the bus­es are de­fec­tive and re­fus­ing to dri­ve the bus­es as part of their in­dus­tri­al ac­tion,” he added.