Mandatory Certification Requirements for Drivers and Conductors on Public Service Vehicles Announced by Barbados Transport Authority

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.”

Chairman of the Alliance Owners of Public Transport (AOPT) Roy Raphael (FILE)

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”.