TRANSPORT and Works Minister Robert Pickersgill has promised better security for Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) bus crews after workers, angered by the killing of a driver, withdrew their services yesterday.

The workers resumed duties at about 2:00 pm after Pickersgill’s assurance, following a meeting with the minister; the executive chairman of the JUTC, Joseph Matalon; and president of the University and Allied Workers Union (UAWU), Dr Trevor Munroe.

The 51-year-old driver, Wilford Gayle, was shot at the scene of a fatal accident involving his bus and a motorcyclist, 25 year-old Ricardo Bogle, on Tuesday along Molynes Road in Kingston. Bogle was flung from his bike when it collided with the bus and died on the spot. Friends of Bogle shot Gayle in the chest and he died in hospital late Tuesday evening.

Pickersgill has promised an immediate increase, by 40 per cent, of plain-clothes policemen assigned to ride the buses. In addition, a dedicated phone line to the police has been established to enable bus crews in trouble to make quick contact with the police. The crews will be issued with cellular telephones.

Matalon said the police have also agreed to increase patrols in certain areas where bus crews have been frequently attacked. In addition, the police will carry out random checks on buses.

“There are areas where buses have been stoned in the past — there is the immediate area in which the accident occurred and there are other volatile areas which will be monitored heavily by the police to ensure the safety of passengers and the crew and the very expensive assets of the JUTC — the buses,” Matalon said. He asked for the public’s co-operation.

“They will stop and board the buses, make checks on the passengers to ensure that we don’t have undesirables on board. I ask the public to bear with the JUTC and the police as we do this,” he said.

Munroe, who heads the union that represents some of the staff, said that while the workers were satisfied with the proposed new security measures, there was still more that could be done.

“While the measures dealing with security and communications are immediate… the union and workers feel quite strongly that we need to move as quickly as possible to a system where all the buses have modern communication connection — radio connection — with other buses, the depots and the police high command,” Munroe said.

“When we have that system, which is what any modern bus system in a metropolis the size of Kingston would have, we would feel much more comfortable that we are equipped with the communication necessary to deter the kind of criminal hooliganism that occurred,” he added.

Before their resumption yesterday, angry JUTC workers gathered outside the office of the Gleaner company to protest against a headline in the company’s afternoon tabloid which read “Chi chi bus driver killed”.

The workers argued that the headline encouraged attacks on bus crews by targeting them as homosexuals. They said it was also insensitive to the widow of the slain driver.

The company is to bear the funeral expenses of the driver.

Pickersgill yesterday clarified media reports that the driver was chased and shot after he tried to drive away from the scene of the accident.

“I am convinced that the driver and conductor operated in a professional manner,” he said. “The conductress told me that the bus had stopped when the motorist was hit. They allowed the passengers to disembark and were trying to get help. She had gone across the road to call the police when she heard the shots,” he said.