Passengers' fury after 27hr trip
2009-07-06 09:11
Joané van der Merwe
Port Elizabeth – Passengers of a Greyhound bus en route from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg were left furious after being left stranded when the bus broke down.
First the bus broke down, then the driver decided to go to sleep, and to top it all off, the mechanic was so fat he couldn’t fit underneath the bus leaving passengers fuming over the “27 hours of hell” they went through.
The Greyhound bus had departed from Port Elizabeth at 17:15 on Friday headed for Johannesburg.
The nightmare began at Queenstown on Friday evening at 22:40.
According to Shamien Madatt, 47, from Port Elizabeth, they were initially told that help was on the way and that it would take 40 minutes.
"Later two taxis from Bloemfontein were supposed to pick us up, then apparently there was a bus on its way from PE, but none of them showed up."
Madatt and her cousin, Tazneen Amid, 20, were among the 33 passengers on the bus.
The driver - apparently just as frustrated - went to sleep among the baggage according to passengers. Amid says at first it seemed as if they couldn’t get hold of a mechanic.
When a mechanic did eventually arrive in the early hours of the morning, he didn’t have any tools. Also, according to Madatt, he soon left because he was too fat to slide underneath the bus.
Amid says that calls to Greyhound were fruitless.
The problem – a broken fan belt – was apparently fixed on Saturday morning just after 07:00 without much hassle. The bus finally arrived in Johannesburg at 19:20 on Saturday night.
Phumi Khomalo of Greyhound’s client services said on Sunday that the spokesperson, Sharon Olivier, "would only be available for comment when she’s back in the office on Monday".
- Die Burger