It is just possibly the most despised commercial entity in South Africa. It has been threatened with closure by ministers, targeted by cops and sued for millions. It’s the intercity bus company from hell that regardless just keeps on trucking.
SA Roadlink, labelled ‘Deathlink’ by its detractors, has, since its inception six years ago, been involved, on average, in two serious road accidents a year. At least 64 passengers have died — the most recent being 10 in three accidents over the past couple of months — and more than 300 injured.
Aside from the incalculable human cost of such carnage, the state’s Road Accident Fund will have paid out millions to these victims. Now the floodgates of civil litigation are beginning to open.
Last week the courts awarded R1-million to an injury victim from Roadlink’s first major crash when, in 2006, a bus drove into a freeway pillar outside Pietermaritzburg, killing 12 (including three children) and injuring 40. Two additional claims amounting to R1.2-million from that accident have also been settled by the operator, without the final compensation sum being disclosed.
Just prior to these litigatory setbacks the new Roadlink national transport manager decamped after only three days in the job, delivering to City Press a dossier alleging collusion between the company’s managers and its owner to forge road permits. The police are investigating.
In response to these latest developments, Western Cape Transport Minister Robin Carlisle joined his Gauteng counterpart to promise “tough action”. Every Roadlink bus would be stopped and comprehensively checked.
Roadlink is seemingly unfazed. Maybe because it has heard it all before. The company’s Nolin Padayachee responded, more ambiguously than he probably intended: “Our proven track record speaks for itself when it comes to safety and danger to our passengers.”
The Democratic Alliance’s Carlisle had promised the same tough action and more in 2010. Reacting to a spate of impounded un-roadworthy Roadlink buses, he huffed and puffed “enough is enough. We have instructed our legal team to look for a legislative solution” to cancelling Roadlink’s operating licences.
Nothing happened. Then in 2011 Carlisle reiterated that Roadlink was “the most problematic of all” bus companies. The solution was — eureka! — “to inspect each and every” Roadlink bus, as well as bring “possible criminal charges” against the company.
Nothing happened. But then African National Congress politicians have fared even worse with Roadlink than their DA counterparts.
Former national police commissioner Bheki Cele, when he was KwaZulu-Natal transport minister, in 2008 described Roadlink as a “killing machine” with “coffins on wheels”. In characteristically dramatic fashion he arbitrarily banned Roadlink from KZN’s roads but backed down equally dramatically when challenged in court.
And when a Roadlink bus burnt out on the N3 in 2009, KZN Transport minister Willies Mchunu promised “tougher measures” because of “too many serious accidents” involving Roadlink. in 2010 Mchunu announced Operation Shanela, deploying a special enforcement unit to ensure that no Roadlink bus left its depot without a pre-trip inspection, saying that ‘experience and the body of evidence’ pointed to Roadlink as the country’s worst public transport provider.
There would be an “interprovincial strategy”, promised Mchunu, aimed at Roadlink being “declared unfit” to hold a public transport licence. But Roadlink kept rolling.
Former national transport minister S’bu Ndebele, who once described as a “moving graveyard” a Roadlink bus impounded because its undercarriage had been roped together, in 2009 promised a “full investigation in conjunction with the SA Police Service” into Roadlink. No more has been heard.
One must hand it to multi-millionaire Roadlink boss, Allan Reddy. He has seen off the ministers, the cops, and the disgruntled passengers. Reddy is clearly a man of great commercial acumen and resilience. No wonder he was some years back Ernst & Young’s tone-deaf choice as SA finalist in its World Entrepreneur awards.
Scary stuff. It legitimates death busses.
Why aren’t all RoadLink busses impounded?
Isn’t this also a case of blaming the perpetrator and not the enabler?
Mr. Alan Reddy’s great financial success and the fact that he became a multimillionaire at no matter what cost, falls into the same category as drug lords, those who kill rhinos and even governments (we don’t have to look far) who are driven by the acquisition of personal wealth. Without conscience or even the loss of life, nothing deters them from the fulfilment of their abject greed.
SA Roadlink is a deathtrap and simply another accident waiting to happen.
The proof lies in its track record, … (or as Mr. Nolin Padayachee ironically and ambiguously stated: ” Our proven track record speaks for itself when it comes to the safety and danger of our passengers”!)
He’s not kidding!!
Surely the closing down of such a ‘business’ and the confiscation of all their buses (certainly time enough ‘to find a legislative solution for cancelling Roadlinks operating licences’) was the logical and immediate step that should have been taken, instead of dilly-dallying around promising ‘tough action’ or ‘to comprehensively check all Roadlink buses’.
The devastating bus accident in which 18 people lost their lives earlier this week, was not a RoadLink bus. However, like Roadlink, were the bus not roadworthy or the driver not licenced etc, the owners of the bus company should, apart from taking full responsibility, face criminal charges.
Not indiviual buses, but bus companies themselves which are suspect, should be prevented from continuing to operate.
Roadlink even makes the taxi industry look better. … Just joking!
Actually, Roadlink and the taxi industry are both equally as lawless, dangerous and negligent.
Both are out of control – just as their drivers are always reported to be (‘he lost control of the vehicle’) before another one of their gruesome smashes.
—————————————————————————————————————-@WSM
What a well-reseached, well written and most worrying wake-up call about how far off course bus companies are allowed to go.
And even after warnings, after threats of ‘tough action’to follow by authorities, after vehicles failing roadworthy tests or being impounded, after accident after accident – causing death and injury to countless passengers, they are still doing exactly what they want – and undeterred, are able to continue to do.
(Sounds like the way the ANC disciplines its members when it deals with their outrageous corruption. i.e. They don’t: It’s all just talk – and more talk … ‘challenges’ and ‘finding solutions’ etc – but nothing ever gets done; and matters just go from bad to worse.)
Quite apart from ‘transporting’ more potential victims, these ‘killing machines with coffins as wheels’ pose a serious danger to other road users as well, as very often, their accidents also involve other vehicles.
.
The accident at Meyerton when a Putco bus driver lost control of the vehicle on Tuesday (AOL News) is now 19 dead, 55 injured – 3 critically. The bus driver was killed – so he can’t say what happened.
Reports from survivors say that passengers asked the driver to reduce speed.
Others, that approaching an on-ramp, some wanted him to turn left – and others right, which might have confused the driver.
Radio reports: there was an unruly ‘protest’ on the highway, forcing the driver to take an alternate and unfamiliar route.
However, according to The Star, this bus was among 8 other Putco buses taken off the road after they failed a roadworthy test at the Meyerton testing station on June 12. Putco says the Midvaal municipality indicated that the bus passed the test on June 14.”
Who is lying? Who is fiddling things? or rather who isn’t corrupt? – who is allowing bus company owners to unconscionably continue to operate (caring about nothing else – including the loss of lives?)
Whether it is Roadlink or Padco or any other bus company, these excuses are not acceptable. A driver must know how to drive. A bus must be roadworthy and equipped to carry passengers. Vehicles using our roads, must be safe.
The blame falls totally on the owners of these bus companies, corrupt officials and our so called law -makers and law enforcers who are allowing this anarchy to continue.
Of course, rot always starts at the top. Does one need to say more?
Charlotte’s comment regarding how some people get rich is spot on – this is true about the very top echelons in this country (& probably also in the rest of the world). Crime does pay – if the government is corrupt. In fact the government is a gang of predators themselves. Just have look at who were the top dogs growling at each other for the president’s job at the recent big bash of alpha dogs – Zapiro’s cartoon (with Malema trying to sneak in) is frightfully funny, “Frightfully” because we laugh at our worst nightmare – a government that is inept at best, criminally incompetent at worst – like some bus drivers and some bus company owners. The tragic bus accident is a metaphor for the larger tragedy which is South Africa. Weep weep weep the beloved country, for the masses are being buried alive in the mass graves called townships. This time by their own treacherous leaders. It must hurt like hell.
On tonght’s news, Putco Bus Company stated that the bus that crashed on Tuesday, DID have a roadworthy certificate.
What else would one have expected to hear from them? An admission that 8 of their buses – this one included, were declared unroadworthy at the Meyerton testing station a fortnight prior to this shocking disaster?
One doesn’t need textbooks to know that the public will always be fed a usual ‘cover-up’ story; and that the truth will be ‘lost in transmission.’
Dead On Arrival
or
Your Time of Departure Might Be from This World
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -
Before you travel Deathlink
Think!!
Your journey
Might be
Your obituary.
It’s not so much: ‘When needs be, the devil drives.’
Rather: ‘When the need is greed … the devil drives.’
One Putco buscrash and 50 are taken off the road in just one province?
Yet Roadlink is untouchable?