THE TRANSPORT BOARD is investigating a video posted on Facebook last week showing one of their drivers engaged in a heated argument with a passenger while driving a bus.
The video was also posted on the NATION’s Facebook page.
Terrence Holder, who recorded the exchange between him and the driver on a cellular phone, also wrote a lengthy account of their dispute.
It has so far generated close to 1 000 responses with many calling for the driver to be disciplined.
On the video, Holder chastises the driver for not picking up a man he described as elderly and wearing a neck brace. He claimed that passengers were telling the driver to “hold on”, that somebody was coming, but when the elderly man got as far as the back door of the bus the driver “pulled off and left him”.
While insisting that he did not see the man standing at the “bus pole”, he told the passenger: “I was a driver for more than 20 years. All my life I was driving. All my life I was transporting people; you can’t come and tell me anything.”
And when Holder threatened to complain to the Transport Board about his behaviour, he responded: “Go and complain. I ain’t frighten.”
At one point the driver even put up his index finger at the passenger.
When contacted, corporate communications specialist at the Transport Board, Lynda Holder, said management had viewed the video and the matter was being investigated.
She explained that drivers were taught not to engage in any confrontation with passengers, adding that it appeared as if that rule had been broken.
In terms of the allegations that the driver had not waited for the passenger, Holder said while drivers were advised to stop only at bus stops, they could also make a moral decision to do otherwise. (MB)
