MTW cracks down on rogue PSV drivers
Minister of Transport and Works Santia Bradshaw has reaffirmed that her ministry is taking steps to curb the actions of rogue Public Service Vehicle (PSV) drivers.
She made this statement during today’s debate on the Appropriation Bill, 2025 in the House of Assembly in response to a passionate inquiry from Minister of Home Affairs Wilfred Abrahams, who questioned the actions of her Ministry in addressing negligent driving.
Citing an issue as one which she inherited, Bradshaw said “Previous administrations have failed to give the Transport Authority the teeth that were necessary, as I’m sure you are aware. We came to Parliament last October with a view to be able to bring the Transport Board regulations. The legislation existed, giving certain powers to the Transport Authority to be able to act on the types of omissions you would have spoken to.”
Having done that I think you can appreciate that if for 16 years, you have been allowed to do as you like, there is a process now for being able to transition people to doing better and behaving better. People will not automatically all of a sudden act appropriately because we’ve passed regulations.”
Bradshaw indicated that as part of the solutions, her Ministry has been in dialogue with the stakeholders to ensure that regulations are followed.
“One of the things we’ve had to start to do is communicate with the public to allow them to understand that these regulations exist and that persons must complete the route because it is a requirement. We’ve also gone further by calling in a number of owners of the vehicles to alert them to a lot of the allegations made towards specific vehicles so that the Transport Authority can commence the necessary investigations to determine the necessary action needed to be taken.”
The Deputy Prime Minister added “That has been a process in itself and I’m assured by the Director of Transport Authority that there has been some change in the attitudes of some drivers and I reiterate that if you have information that suggests otherwise then I would ask that the person who is writing to you on a regular basis share that information with us so that we can deal with it frankly.”
Abrahams had stated earlier that he is regularly notified about the bad driving of PSV drivers and believed it to be an easy problem to rectify, yet it had persisted.
Director of Transport Authority Ruth Holder was adamant that there has been an improvement in that department despite any noise from outside which suggested otherwise.
“We do know that there is a process of natural justice that needs to be addressed before we start to think that we can suspend a licence. The Transport Authority has disciplinary procedures in place and it is well known that there is the absolute need for evidence. When the Transport Authority gets copies of any evidence of bad behaviour from PSVs, we tend to call in the owners.” she explained.
Holder went on to say, “We don’t take our job as a matter of fact, we take it quite seriously. We have some excellent PSV operators that are doing what they are supposed to be doing on a daily basis, but it is difficult for us to identify people (who aren’t) if we do not have the information. Since we had the regulations in place, we are seeing a significant difference in terms of the behaviours on the road and in terms of what we are actually doing on the inside in relation to people who are behaving badly.”
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