My Wish list as a Public Bus Captain/Driver

Bus Captain’s Day

For the past 30yrs, I have not driven a bus before. While driving my own car; I have prejudice and misperceptions of those “Bus Uncle”. Their job do not seem to be difficult to me, sit down holding the steering wheel; air-con bus; but the way they drive and occupy the road space, as if the whole road is built solely from the tax money been paid by them. Make a near sudden-accident stop at the middle of the road without any pre-emptive signal given. Do not seem to smile, always rushing in and out the hurry mode. Jerking and braking and hardly empathize those travelling pax been standing and been rocked from left to right.

But now, I can understand why some actions are taken by them on a situational basis; but I do not condone some of the so called “un necessary driving action” if proper consideration and technique is applied while driving the 12,000cc bus engine capacity.

This kind of career has been stigmatized by the general public, and is lacking in recognition, appreciation and not many people hold it in esteem. 

I still remembered how much convincing and justification needed before my family members can accept what I wish to do for my mid-life career change. My father-in-law, whom last positing was a General Manager of a metal stamping company, rang me up and out of concern, spoke to me to forgo this career choice. 

I still vividly recalled what he told me, “ the bus is so big and it is so dangerous, how are you going to drive it”. I told him, I will be given sufficient training and that, I have passed the TP test first before I actually can drive a 12M bus. My wife, initially did not give her full blessing for me to embark on this new career. She is more pragmatic and realistic on the shortfall of take home income and this may resulted in adjusting our lifestyle all together. 

I wish to see that, a BC’s day can be gazette. Similar to Children’s Day, Teacher’s Day, Mother’s Day, Navy’s Day;  this is to give public recognition and appreciation of their many sacrifices of working in this public transport industry. 

The charter of a public transport company, its duty is to provide public transport service for 365 days, 7-days a week;  I would suggest on BC’s day, morning peak period service from 0600 to 0900hr will still be provided, the rest of the balance work hour will be left it to the bus operator/company to organize, lunches, award ceremony, safety talk by TP and LTA, for those working in the AM shift; similarly for the PM Shift, evening peak period service from 1700hr to 2000hr will still be provided. One recommendation is that this BC’s day to be chosen from one of the School Holiday window. Example June or December each year will be good.

Elective to perform OT

The required hour is 44hours/week. As in the employment act, 6 days of work and 1 paid rest day. This will workout mathematically as 7hr 20mins per workday. However, operationally, now I can understand that, technically, it is extremely, difficult and complex in nature for the bus operator (SBS, SMRT or Tower Transit) to schedule service route that, the BC duty can end exactly on the official hour mark. 

Once the BC is sign-on for a particular shift duty; he or she is mandated to complete the duty as per the duty number and the stipulated time in the time card.

He is not allowed to stop the bus service once 7hr 20mins is met. Some duty number or a particular service route, do have working hours less than 7hr 20mins ( a bit liken as Bonus Work-day!).

I particularly do not wish to do excessive OT. One probable improvement suggestion is that, the use of “standby crew”. Standby crew, is an operational overhead to the bus operator. Can the relevant come in to see how this cost can be defrayed? But if the end justify for the means of getting more local to come into this industry for economic defence per se, then why not.

Most of the last bus services will end around 0100hr; perhaps a small crew of standby BC whom the working hours starts around 1700hr to 0100hr. For me, I am not particularly desperate to do OT to earn and extra S$20/day. So one suggestion is that, the moment I sign-on for the day duty, it is my responsibility to pre-empt the TK or Starter, that, I will not be completing the duty number and time card in full. I will be sign-off, at the next most possible convenient time, when I the reach the interchanges where I started off earlier.

For example, today, my sign-on is at 1500hr and the official work hour will ends at 2220hr. However, the sign-off time required by this said duty number is 2520hr (i.e with 3 hours of OT). Form the time card schedule planning,  when at 2220hr, I still at ¾ quarter of my trip journey. So, I must continue until I reached the destination, say for example at 2300hr. Hence, the OT registered will be just 40mins. At 2300hr, I will hand over the bus to the assigned standby crew to complete the required service duty.

The main reason is that, for my health and wellbeing, I valued to have a good night sleep. Humans are not nocturnal begins. Our bio-system, through evolution has been designed to work during daylight and sleep/rest/regen during the night time.

Sincerely, as a local, and knowing that, my journey is a long one to stay, I wish to have the option to decide whether, I wish to do OT or not for this week or today.

Enhanced WIS for Local

Since my starting pay as a trainee BC was S$1625/mth, I did benefited from this excellent Workfare Income Supplement (WIS), that if you are earn and average gross monthly income of not more than $1,900/- for the period worked. For about 3 months, during the said training period,  I do receive some cold hard cash and CPF top ups form the Government. I am thankful that.

However, the moment I passed out as a certified BC, and started to do revenue able service, with OT and allowances, my average gross income has exceeded this $1,900/- income ceiling. For this last two years, since my basic is below S$1700/- , my average gross pay stay around, S$2900/- per mth, and I now deemed not qualify for this WIS scheme. After deducting for my CPF contribution, my take home income is about $2300/-mth .

What actually baffled me the most is that, the WIS scheme is good, but I take it as a double whammy blow to me. 

Because, the harder I worked to increase my gross income, and because of the nature of this public transport service industry, the more I will be excluded from the norm of the society and have lesser time to engage with my family.

The suggestion for improvement that I looking for is that, only basic salary should be included to compute the ceiling of S$1,900/- and not a Singaporean Citizen gross income. As for me, the potential cash payout can help to compensate the time loss to engage with my family, either by taking a couple of days annual leave or use it to have good 8 course dinner with family on special occasion.

I hope by tweaking, this WIS, a little, there may be more local are welling to come on board.

COLA

Working as a BC in the public transport industry is an occupational hazard.

 Its working hour is “beyond normal” working hours. 

Working, family and rest time is beyond normal. I do not see, how work-life balance can be achieved. I do not know how I can be included into the main stream of the society activities. Too many sacrifices have to endure. To me, just one word, “hardship”.

 

I wish that, beside the current WIS scheme, there need to have another scheme called, “cost of living allowance” or COLA in short. It is an extra feature in the pay package for locals only, to address and compensate and encourage more local to come board to this public transport industry. 

You may ask what a fuss about it; why the Chinese PRC and the Malaysian BC is not complaining. The answer is pretty simple, when a Singaporean BC takes home S$2200/-mth, he has only S$2200/- to sustain his family, no more and no less, and period. 

However, after several interviews and kopitiam session, with my Malaysian and Chinese PRC colleagues; I can confidently sum up that, they too will encounter all the mentioned and listed difficulties, hardship and challenges, and I believe it is much more; however with their earned take home monthly income, after translation into their country currency, it is able to “boa rong” or duly compensate the numerous stated shortcomings and un-satisfactoriness  been expounded in this long list of blog postings.

A Malaysian BC will spend about S$120/- in Singapore. The rest of the income of some RM6000 to RM8000 will be spent in Malaysian. To you know that with such an amount, the Malaysian BC and Family actually can lead a fairly comfortable life with house and car.

The Chinese PRC BC after deducting their daily expenses and including money for smoking, will have some min RMB8,000 nett saving per month. So can you image in 2 years’ time, once their contractual agreement is done due, and decided not to renew their contract with the bus operator, and they are going home with easily some RMB150,000. I think, this a pretty good some of money.

One suggestion is that, if the State can come to help out, and whereby, more local can be encourage to join this industry; I would think, a $10 COLA to be given for per day work ; tax deducted for the Bus Operator Profit and Loss will certainly help the locals.

Shift Allowance

When I first started working in 1987 as a moulding supervisor with AT&T CPS in Kampung Ubi; I worked for 2long years in Permanent Night Shift. 

At that age of 25 and just married, working hard and wishing to earn a little more to save in preparation for my 1^st born arrival is a normal duty of a husband and father to be. The shift work start at 2300hr on Sunday till 0700hr Saturday. 

Tough it is a “grave yard” shift as all my colleagues was referring; I am still happy and healthy as, the duty start time and end time is fixed and this give rise to normalcy to my life as newly married person. On top of that, each night of work will entitled me to an extra shift allowance of S$11/-. As compared to, if not remember wrongly, the AM shift has $2 and the PM shift has $5 as shift allowance per day.

Coming back to this public transport industry, currently, there is no such shift allowance have been given. To me, working as a BC for PM shift is one of the toughness job around. You can literally, wish your colleague, good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night.

I would suggest that, only those official duty that end duty after 2359hr, will be entitled to this special shift allowance. If shift allowance can be given, I believe, this can entice more local to come on board to take up this career as BC.