by Khaila Gentle
BELMOPAN, Mon. Oct. 17, 2022
An employee at the Belmopan Bus Terminal is lucky to have escaped with only minor injuries after a Westline bus crashed into the terminal building on Saturday evening. Surveillance camera footage of the incident indicates that the collision occurred when the passenger bus pulled into a parking spot but continued forward, driving over the yellow parking block and then hitting a desk near the boarding area. That desk, which ended up crushed against the wall, was where Kimara Montes, the terminal supervisor, was seated before she managed to narrowly escape.
Montes was not supposed to have been on duty on Saturday, but according to the Minister of Transport, Hon. Rodwell Ferguson, she had taken over the shift of an assistant supervisor that was unable to work that day.
The cause of the collision, which almost led to the loss of a life, was brake failure. The management of Westline has reached out to the Ministry of Transport since the incident took place and has offered to assist Ms. Montes with her hospital bill.
“It could have been very, very fatal. Because, if someone was sitting at the desk, that person would have gotten crushed between the bus and the wall,” said Minister Ferguson.
The Belize Bus Association has been at odds with the Ministry of Transport for some time now, as the current administration continues to push for the modernization of the country’s transport industry. In a social media post made shortly after Saturday’s accident, Hon. Rodwell Ferguson reiterated his stance on regulating the country’s buses.
He said, “As we are cracking down, the operators might feel we are against them. This is the eventuality. That’s why we will implement an inspection station and other measures at [the] Department of Transport.”
In speaking further about the matter in an interview on Monday, he revealed that inspection stations can be expected to be established across the country within the next three months. He also said that, he believes, after the incident on Saturday, most Belizeans now recognize that the plan to transform the transport sector must be made a reality sooner rather than later.
Hon. Rodwell Ferguson has stated that he wants to see the transformation of the industry begin as early as December of this year. That includes the improvement of the state of the nation’s buses. In the long term, Ferguson says Belizeans can hope to see improvements to the bus terminals as well as the possible implementation of a policy that will prevent outdated buses from being on the road.
“We can’t be forcing the operators to upgrade their buses, and then the terminal is inadequate,” he added.