Sixteen public buses in Singapore will soon have protective screens for bus captains as part of a six-month trial to see if it helps to shield them from harm.
It will start early next year and will be found on buses operated by Go-Ahead Singapore, SBS Transit, SMRT Buses and Tower Transit.
Senior Minister of State for Transport Lam Pin Min was responding to a question by Tanjong Pagar Member of Parliament Melvin Yong in Parliament yesterday.
Mr Yong, who is also the Executive-Secretary of the National Transport Workers’ Union (NTWU) asked if the authorities would consider installing screens to protect bus captains in Singapore and to lower the risk of a hijacking.
Through this trial, LTA will be able to gather feedback from commuters and bus captains about the screens.
Last December, three bus captains in Singapore were assaulted. One of them was driving Service 93 and the other two were driving Service 129. They were physically assaulted by a male passenger who boarded their buses along Bartley Road.
Tower Transit previously mentioned that it was working with Certis CISCO Academy to educate their drivers on how to manage conflicts and hostile situations.
Bus captains under SBS Transit attend incident management courses to defuse and de-escalate conflicts.
There is also an emergency button for their bus captains to alert the control centre to dispatch a traffic inspector.
Protective screens for bus captains are not new. They have been implemented in the United Kingdom and Australia.
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