Cold discomfort on dirty buses
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• Western SMT bus crews at Paisley and Johnstone depots are protesting over alleged cold, dirty and defective buses.
The crews are complaining that while buses are technically roadworthy, many of them are sent out with defects. On one occasion, it is said, all the passengers had to get out of a bus which had to stop on a hill because the bottom gear was defective. They had to walk to level ground before they could re-board the bus.
Drivers operating o-m-o. buses had complained that they could hardly use the ticket-machines because their hands were so cold.
A spokesman for the company said that all the problems complained of were common to bus depots throughout the country. "There is an acute shortage of skilled engineers and mechanics at bus depots," he said. "We have still not overcome the backlog of work created by the recent three-week strike of maintenance workers."