To show their ap­pre­ci­a­tion for bus dri­ver See­lal Moonkissoon’s hero­ic ef­forts in bring­ing a 57-seater bus to a safe stop dur­ing Tues­day’s ma­jor ac­ci­dent, the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) will present him with an award.

Gen­er­al man­ag­er of PTSC Bashir Mo­hammed on Thurs­day spoke high­ly of Moonkissoon’s pos­i­tive at­ti­tude to­wards his job and con­sis­tent ex­cel­lence in PTSC’s train­ing ses­sions and an­nu­al ex­am­i­na­tions.

Moonkissoon was the dri­ver of the Deluxe Coach bus which was in­volved in the Ch­agua­nas ac­ci­dent that claimed the lives of Tara Ba­boolal, 66, and Judy Mar­cia Reid, 60.

Po­lice said a loaded dump truck was head­ing south along the high­way near Char­lieville when the right front tyre blew out.

The truck, which was on the left lane, col­lid­ed with a Blue Wa­ters de­liv­ery truck in the cen­tre lane. The de­liv­ery truck crossed the me­di­an and broad­sided the bus which was head­ing north.

The bus had a ca­pac­i­ty of 57 pas­sen­gers. A to­tal of 48 peo­ple were in­jured fol­low­ing the crash. The two women who died were pas­sen­gers of the bus.

Mo­hammed said PTSC’s pri­or­i­ty was to pro­vide coun­selling to Moonkiss­son, 53, who has been on sick leave since the in­ci­dent.

“Our first step has been to pro­vide coun­selling to Mr Moonkissoon in or­der for him to over­come the trau­ma he faced,” Mo­hammed said.

Coun­selling is be­ing pro­vid­ed through PTSC’s Em­ploy­ee As­sis­tance Pro­gramme.

“We are very ap­pre­cia­tive and sup­port­ive of the com­men­da­tion com­ing in by mem­bers of the pub­lic. I am re­al­ly go­ing to recog­nise him be­cause he re­al­ly did put in­to prac­tice all of PTSC’s train­ing giv­en to him,” Mo­hammed said.

Mo­hammed could not say when PTSC would award Moonkissoon, say­ing that he first had to ful­ly re­cov­er from his mi­nor in­juries. The dri­ver suf­fered cuts from shards of glass.

He said it was manda­to­ry that its dri­vers are pro­vid­ed with a week-long train­ing through its acad­e­my.

Hav­ing served PTSC for 12 years, Mo­hammed said Moonkissoon has nev­er failed any of their an­nu­al dri­ving tests and ex­am­i­na­tions.

“Mr Moonkissoon is one of the more po­lite and cour­te­ous dri­vers,” Mo­hammed said.

Mo­hammed ad­mit­ted that the trav­el­ling pub­lic, stake­hold­ers and even the in­jured PTSC pas­sen­gers have been call­ing their of­fice to praise Mo­hammed’s brave ef­forts.

Some, he said have hailed Moonkissoon a hero.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view on Thurs­day, Moonkissoon who works the Port-of-Spain to San Fer­nan­do route said if PTSC opts to give him a spe­cial com­men­da­tion or award he would ac­cept it.

“It has been hard to cope know­ing that peo­ple have died in the ac­ci­dent. I tried my best to bring the bus un­der con­trol. I am lucky to be alive. Things could have turned out dif­fer­ent­ly,” Moonkissoon said.