JUTC's stone throwing woes return as new bus damaged

 

Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) Managing Director Paul Abrahams says he is disappointed and disheartened by the latest damage to one of the bus company's new units given the challenges the entity has been faced with.

 

An image posted Tuesday to X, formerly Twitter, showed the bus with a smashed side glass.

 

The damaged unit was observed in Portmore, St. Catherine.

 

Mr. Abrahams said the bus was repaired and redeployed.

 

He said stone throwing incidents have plagued the JUTC for years.

 

"When you look at that senseless act, it speaks to not only the damage to the unit and the risk to commuters, but it also speaks to the downtime that the bus is unavailable for moving commuters around. So there's a revenue loss attached to that also. So when you compound everything, it is just a senseless, senseless act. We just cannot understand why people do this," Mr. Abrahams lamented. 

 

Besides the cost to repair the unit and the downtime, Mr. Abrahams explained that stone throwing can be far more detrimental. 

 

"If a stone goes into the windshield of the driver and he loses control, that bus will stop when it decides to stop it. And I don't know what it will take down in this process of stopping," he warned.