Apart from their main task at hand, drivers may have to be mindful of other duties. Mr Leo from DKJ Transport Service said that handling children in school buses tends to stress out drivers.
The children tend to get rather active and noisy, especially in the afternoon, and drivers have to ask the children to strap on their seatbelts before the bus starts moving.
“We definitely also receive quite a few complaints throughout the year (from parents), which the drivers have to deal with,” he added.
These complaints include pick-up timings being too early, pick-up points being too far away from the children’s houses, or drop-off timings being too late.
The toll that shift work takes on the body is one that cannot be avoided.
Mr Lee the student who is a part-time driver with A&S Transit said that it is tiring for him to split his sleeping schedule while juggling an internship with shift work.
“Being a bus captain also kind of takes away your social life because you’re just really busy all day,” he added.
After graduating from polytechnic, Mr Lee does not intend to become a full-time bus driver because he prefers a managerial role. He aspires to become a station manager for an overseas airline.
WHAT INDUSTRY PLAYERS CAN DO FOR THE BUS SECTOR
Transport analysts said that better worker conditions still need to be established to woo jobseekers.
Dr Samuel Chng said that the nature of the job requiring long hours of work and interaction with passengers means that the job might remain unattractive to many people and deter them from joining the industry.
He heads the Urban Psychology Lab in the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities at the Singapore University of Technology and Design.
To attract potential drivers, flexible work models could be introduced to offer schedules that might appeal to a broader workforce, including retirees or part-timers, Dr Chng suggested.
It is definitely important to ensure that drivers are fairly remunerated for the essential service they provide and have opportunities to continually upskill and reskill to progress in the industry, making the role more appealing, he added.
Mr Saktiandi Supaat, chairperson of the People’s Action Party Transport Government Parliamentary Committee, agreed that bus operators who are flexible can attract different types of potential applicants such as parents with children.
“Recent efforts to raise wages and look into improving shift work for bus captains by the bus operators are good. So, hopefully, more of our Singaporeans will see a career as a bus captain as attractive,” he said.
Dr Terence Fan from Singapore Management University who does transportation research proposed that to attract and retain talent, bus operators may want to look at engaging substitute drivers to take over some employees’ duties and provide more paid holidays to the full-timers in order to appeal to “the overall lifestyle of these positions”.
However, Dr Ong from NUS believes that a different approach is needed because the lack of manpower cannot be solved immediately.
“Is there any way to do more with less? Bus operators can consider consolidating operations, relying on less manpower yet serving more commuters, especially in areas that are close or nearby to each other.
“So this means that we may even need to rethink or reconfigure business practices.”
Multiple small businesses can merge to become a group, absorb a larger player in the market or consolidate, which might be more cost-efficient, Dr Ong added.
He said that bigger operators have a much higher chance of surviving overall, compared to smaller businesses.
“We really need to sit down and think about the profitability of bus service operators to help relieve the shortfall of drivers.”
Dr Ong also said that service providers should not completely rely on drivers and have to think hard about how to begin autonomous bus operations or have driverless buses.
“We do not really have a choice, so we have to use whatever means that will help in ensuring the efficiency of the service. The reality is that if we don’t do it now, then when the crash comes, we will be too late.”
Mr Lee the director of business development at Westpoint Transit said that setting up a structured approach to train bus drivers can help to broaden the mindsets of the new generation towards what a bus driver does.
“For example, it could be a course, some sort of educational path that is not university-degree standard, but the foundation is there such that the knowledge and skill set required can be of certain quality,” he said.
“Basically, to teach drivers in a more structured way than it is currently.” There are no such courses at present.
Mr Lee added that enhancing the skill sets of drivers and those of the next generation will increase social awareness of what it means to be a bus driver, thereby allowing the occupation to command greater respect.
Mr Ahmad the coach driver from Luxury Coach said that one of the walls to break down for bus driving is the “publicity and branding”.
Bus drivers tend to be an invisible part of people’s lives and he believes that leveraging social media to “engage the doom-scrolling generation and give a peek into the transport industry could help plant the seed into the consciousness of the youth”.
Mr Naz Farihin from A&S Transit said: “Drivers are sacred. Ask any bus industry right now – are they looking for drivers? I don’t think you can find one that says ‘no’.”
Mr Ahmad is holding out hope that people will see bus driving as a noble career choice, where it is providing an important and necessary service to society.
He said that he had wanted to drive buses since he was a boy, but when he told his primary school teacher that he wanted to become a bus driver, she disapproved and asked him to aim higher or pick another ambition.
“Change needs to start early on, while minds are impressionable and malleable. If children see their role models dismiss or belittle something, or act a certain way towards something, they will copy and eventually internalise that behaviour,” he added.
