Disrespectful Minister

In the wake of Monday’s bus crash in L’anse Fourmi, which claimed one life and left five persons in hospital, Hinds along with the Public Transport service Commission’s (PTSC) Chairman Terrence Beepath and General Manager Ronald Forde visited Tobago on Tuesday, to meet with Tobago House of Assembly (THA) Infrastructure and Public Utilities secretary Gary Melville with the aim of visiting the site where the crash occurred, as well to visit the injured persons at the hospital and relatives of the deceased.

However, PTSC staff are disgruntled that the Minister and the team never visited them. “we are saying that as the union and as the workers, ‘you are disrespectful Mr Hinds!’ We are asking that the Prime Minister look into this because the Prime Minister is Tobagonian and it was very disrespectful as the Minister of Transport that he (Hinds) along with the Chairman of the board and the General Manager of PTSC, did not even come to see what was going on. “We are saying that you all have been very disrespectful and we are not going to take that. we are not going to sit idly by and take that disrespectfulness because since he (the Minister) was given the post of Minister of Transport, he never came to Tobago, he never came here and it hurts us badly,” Taylor said.

He added that staff was informed of Hinds’ visit as they were also told that he (the Minister) would also visit them during this trip. “The workers here are disgruntled at this point in time following the incident which pertains to one bus and a number of persons who are severely injured including the driver who is one of our own. We were told by the Communications Manager that Minister Hinds would be here in Tobago and he would address the workers and the union and also visit the families affected by this unfortunate incident.

“We made ourselves available in order to meet with the Minister for him to have a first-hand view of the situation that we face here. we are glad that he did visit the families in both L’anse Fourmi and at the hospital but he paid it no mind neither did he have on his agenda to visit PTSC to hear the issues of the workers.”

The President went ahead as he listed some of the conditions faced by the workers at the Shaw Park compound, as he noted that the Minister should have visited to see firsthand rather than be guided. “The compound here floods when it rains, our surroundings is unkempt, the buses that are defective for the travelling public, our working conditions, our health and safety issues, the issues that the drivers are having. “Minister Hinds has no information as to what is happening here, it is only hearsay from those who want to mamaguy him.

“Come and see for yourself and we are not going to sit idly by and take that. No one even come to talk to us as the workers to find out what happened, what are some of the issues we face. we need counselling, we work under these conditions daily.”

Taylor explained that the go slow will continue until they get new buses to service the Tobago public. “we want better buses here and we want it soon. The workers here are totally fed up, all the workers, we are not going to drive any defective buses. Two buses left today and they returned shortly after as defective, unable to service their route.

“We have a listing of seventy five defects and each bus represents all the defects on the listing and it didn’t come from the union, it came directly from the Licensing Authority. “These buses are not to be on the road, these buses have never passed through licensing office for the period that they have been assigned to Tobago and they have been here close to ten years. They have never been inspected by the Tobago Licensing Authority, so they are not deemed as road worthy.”