Drivers and conductors will have to undergo mandatory certification in order to work on public service vehicles (PSVs).
This was announced recently by Acting Prime Minister Santia Bradshaw, who is also Minister of Transport and Works, following the first sensitisation meeting of the new Transport Authority regulations.
The meeting was held with various stakeholders, including the General Insurance Association of Barbados, police, PSV associations and the Transport Authority.
Bradshaw said the training sessions would start on October 1 and PSV operators would attend in groups.
“So we’re putting persons on alert that a new culture and a new change is coming to the sector and one that I think will be welcomed based on the comments that have been made in the general public . . . . So over the course of the next few months, it is our intention, with Haigh Communications, to have a series of training sessions to sensitise the general public and also, as I said, we will have meetings with the owners, we’ll have meetings with the drivers and the conductors.”
She noted that the training sessions, which were formulated by the Transport Authority and the Barbados Community College, were conceptualised to promote safe driving practices.
“We recognise that many people require training because you have a lot of persons who are leaving school [and] in many cases they’ve not been to any formal training to be able to learn how to be a driver or even a conductor.
“We feel very strongly that the time has now come for that type of mandatory training to be put in place for persons to be certified, in order to be able to hold these very important positions where they are responsible for the lives of passengers and certainly of people who are using our roads.”
Bradshaw added: “Based on the input from the stakeholders, we have formulated a training session that will allow the certification of the drivers and the conductors to be able to now engage in a level of training and certification, before they can participate in driving and certainly conducting on the roads. We feel this is an important element of making the change and the transition from what obtained before and what we believe must obtain going forward.”
The Acting Prime Minister stressed that it was not an attempt “to discard people”.
“I want to make that abundantly clear. This is not to discard people. This is actually to improve the [person’s] abilities and their skills . . . . It gives the owners and the operators a bit more comfort in knowing that their investment . . . is being placed in the hands of a driver who has at least gone through the training that was necessary to allow them to understand the investment that they have in their control, but also to appreciate that they’re carrying the safety of the pedestrian and the passengers in that vehicle as well, and that they owe a duty of care to other road users.”
Stressing that there were only “minor changes”, Bradshaw stated that the substance of the regulations were agreed upon by the stakeholders.
Roy Raphael, chairman of the Alliance Owners of Public Transport, who attended the meeting, welcomed the mandatory certification.
“We see that a number of the conductors in the service are uncertified and I’m happy to know that the ministry is moving quickly to certify them, to encourage them to become conductors. Obviously, we looked at the fact that we have a number of drivers that we would like to see come into the service,” he said. He added that his association would be rolling out a number of initiatives that would be beneficial to the PSV operators as well as the public.
