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icwiet?
Page 25
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Masgow W. Mids fighit
thugs menace
A MAJOR effort is being made by West Midlands PTE to reduce the number of attacks on its bus crews.
A joint campaign by management and trade union officials is being backed up by a E65,000 programme of fitting protective screens around the cabs of 1,195 double-deckers and 165 singledeckers, while all new vehicles are also likely to be equipped with such screens. crews are not in favour of protective screens being fitted. WMPTE staff are being offered £100 prizes for ideas on how to counter the problem which will be discussed at a top-level conference on October 16.
The campaign is being spearheaded by WMPTE management officials John Adamson, David Jenkins, and Les Saunders, and Transport and General Workers Union members Arthur Gough, John Meacham, and George Jandu.
The six-man team's brief will include monitoring of new anti-thugs measures, and will also examine the extent to which staff should be given public-relations training.
At Greater Manchester transport, all new buses have been equipped with two-way radios for several years and this incorporates a discretelypositioned button in the driver's cab.
GMT is also fitting American-style klaxon horns at a cost of £30 each, but its A post-graduate study group is researching the problem in Bradford upon West Yorkshire PTE's behalf and will make its final report next year.
Its total of 73 recorded assaults in 1977/78 was four up on the previous year and compares with 85 attacks on West Midlands staff this year alone. Thirty-four of the WYPTE attacks occurred in Bradford.
It hopes to be able to incorporate the group's findings in future vehicle design specifications, and has already fitted radios to most of its fleet. South Yorkshire PTE has not experienced a great deal of violence against its crews and believes this could be because , the area is one of low unemployment.
It has equipped vehicles with two-way radios and footoperated klaxon alarms, while two buses have been equipped experimentally with still cameras which focus on the cab and upper saloon.
An SYPTE spokesman told CM that there had been no requests from unions for protective screens around cabs, and added that most trouble encountered had been outside rather than inside buses.
He also agreed that SYPTE's high proportion of crewoperation — it is still in excess of 40 per cent — "could have a bearing" on the low level of attacks on crews.