Bus drivers have long complained of being damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
If they leave passengers by the side of the road – especially children – they are accused of not giving good service, even being heartless.
If they agree to the pleas from passengers and illegally overload their bus, drivers are accused of being irresponsible.
Worse, they get fined by officers from L.T.A., the Land Transport Authority.
Now it seems that the L.T.A. has decided to take a hands-on approach to helping out bus drivers – by illegally overloading their own vehicles with school students.
A concerned citizen snapped this shot, above, of an authority vehicle, number plate LTA07, with at least eight students visible in the back tray of the late model pick up.
“How's this for double standard?” they asked.
They did not want to be named.
According to one source, carrying passengers in the open tray of a vehicle was made illegal in recent years because passengers cannot be safely ‘secured’, for example in the event of an accident.
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This could not be confirmed with the L.T.A. because they did not respond to questions sent via email.
Instead, it appears their email server has been hacked, because the address immediately, and apparently automatically, responded with a return email informing us of a “winners notification” from the “UK Lotteries Headquarters”, a non-existent organisation that is not very convincing front for an online scam.
According to the email, we had won, in U.S. not U.K. currency, $1,000 million, otherwise known as a billion dollars.
If true, this would be more than enough to buy buses for the safe transportation of school children in Samoa, if not the region, for the next millennia.
However, back in the real world, the questions that may or may not have got through to LTA management remain to be clarified.
Referring to the above photo, our questions are:
- 1. Is this common practice for L.T.A. workers?
- 2. What regulations does this break?
- 3. Will the driver be fined, and/or disciplined as other drivers have been fined for similar offences?
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