The carelessness and apathy of the commercial bus drivers towards the lives of commuters on the Woji/Slaughter, Slaughter/Aggrey Road, Slaughter/Garrison and Slaughter/Mile 1 Diobu routes have inevitably called for public concern. There is therefore the need for the “forces” concerned: the Road Safety Corps, the Nigerian Police Force, TIMARIV, etc to show some concern to save commuters from avoidable accidents on these routes.
It is common knowledge that the commercial bus drivers on these routes do not work with “conductors” in their buses. The absence of the conductor in a bus has some far-reaching dangerous consequences. This is because of the importance of the several jobs he (the conductor) performs in the bus for the driver and the commuters.
In addition to the loading of passengers, the conductor collects the transport fares from the passengers and gives balances where necessary. He also takes care of the opening and closing of the door when the passengers embark into or disembark from the bus.
Because conductors are no longer used in these buses, drivers collect the transport fares as theY drive along and therefore drive without any concentration.
Again, the buses on these routes leave the doorways open while the vehicles are in motion . Some of them do not have doors. In some cases, the doors are bad and tied to the door-pillar, leaving the door-way open to the detriment of the passengers in a fully loaded bus.
Where such bad doors are closed, it is only the driver of the bus who can open the door, and except he does that, no passenger goes out even in the event of any accident. Such accidents as fire outbreaks have occasionally taken place and the passengers escaped death only from the assistance of pedestrians who forced the door open. The driver was confused as his attention was only on putting off the fire on the engine, inadvertently leaving his passengers to their ill-fate.
I am therefore calling on all ‘forces” concerned with transportation in Port Harcourt, particularly the officers who work within the areas complained about, to see that every commercial bus works with a conductor/collector and no bus should be allowed to ply on our roads with the door open.
BARR. IBIENEBO G. FINGESI
