Passengers of a Mahdia minibus destined for Georgetown on Tuesday managed to escape unharmed after the bus flipped on its side while trying to navigate a deep pool of water along the Linden/Lethem Trail.
According to information received, the incident occurred around 3:30 pm, along what is known as the “KK Trail,” and resulted in the bus, occupied by several passengers, including three children, ending on its side.
One man, who was in the bus at the time, told Stabroek News that persons began to panic even further after they realized that the door lock of the bus was jammed.
The man explained that the driver of the bus had passed the same pool of water one day prior without incident and had attempted to do so again on Tuesday afternoon, when water began to fill the inside of the bus.
“He drove the day before thinking it was still safe there, but when the bus meet to the middle, the front driver side started sinking. Passengers began to panic but there wasn’t anything the driver could have done at that time to save the bus from going down,” he said.
“When the bus reach flat on the side, it began to sink deeper….everyone was just panicking and the door was seized for a moment, but the driver managed to rescue the passengers before anything could have happened. There are a lot of other holes on the trail that the same incident almost reoccurred,” the man added.
Meanwhile, as photographs of the overturned bus began to circulate on social media, many persons expressed their concern for the current state of the Linden/Lethem trail, more so since the road continues to deteriorate on a daily basis, as a result of heavy rainfall.
Minister within the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, Annette Ferguson recently told members of the media that the ministry is looking at routine maintenance as a long term solution to the continuous degradation of the road.
She explained that efforts would be made to ensure that maintenance works are effected to avoid these recurrences on an annual basis during the rainy season.
Additionally, Ferguson said measures will be put in place to address the issue of heavily laden trucks damaging bridges along the trail, as a result of them carrying excessive weight.
“My colleague, Minister David Patterson would have publically shared his concern about these heavy laden vehicles traversing these bridges, overloaded and all that. What the Ministry of Public Infra-structure will be doing is putting mechanisms and measures in place to avert these situations because if we have the regulations and rules of the road it has to work. What you find happening is that on an annual basis the government has to shift money from other areas to these areas we didn’t cater for,” she said.
