Recently, a video of a woman in Punggol lashing out at the bus captain sparked heated debate online. The short 7-second video clip which went viral, showed a woman shouting at a bus captain in front of her children and helper at a bus stop in Punggol.
The video was taken by a passenger on board the public bus. The post got over two thousand shares and a majority of the commenters expressed outraged at the woman’s behaviour.
According to the post, the woman was boarding the bus with her helper who was pushing a stroller. As there was also an elderly on a wheelchair alighting via the rear door, the bus captain told the woman’s helper that they needed to wait.
The helper didn’t understand the bus captain’s instructions to wait, and the woman raised her voice at the female bus captain. The woman shouted in Mandarin while pointing her finger at the bus captain: “You are a bus captain, I don’t owe you anything!” The video showed the woman being accompanied by two children, one of whom is sitting in the stroller.
The Punggol woman has now responded and is calling the video “out of context”. She said the bus captain yelled at them first and that this scared her maid and children.
The 31-year-old, who identified herself as Miss Wang contacted 8 Vision News to tell her side of the story. She said that her family of four and the maid were at Sumang Walk between 11:00 am and 11:30 am last Sunday (13th March) at the bus-stop in the area of Block 322B.
After the bus arrived, her husband and her eldest son waited at the front door of the bus to get on the bus, but the door did not open, and the maid pushed the stroller and prepared to get on the bus from the back door with the younger daughter.
“I was standing at the (front door) and looked back, and I saw that my maid was not standing in the center of the door. She was standing beside the door, she wanted to see if anyone was going to come down, but she didn’t see it. It looked like the maid was going to push the stroller up.”
As a mother, it is your duty to protect your children
Ms Wang said that the maid later saw someone walking about in the bus and thought someone was about to get off the bus, so she pulled the stroller back and went back and forth three times, but she did not board the bus.
“We just heard the bus driver shouting ‘you wait a minute’ inside (the bus) two or three times, very loudly. I was outside and in front, and I could hear it. I was startled and didn’t know what was happening all of a sudden. But my workers and kids were scared.”
Ms Wang said that the maid did not see where the bus captain was the first two times, nor did she see a wheelchair in the bus.
She said that as a mother, she felt obliged to step forward and protect her children. “I just felt like my family, my kids were frightened. The third time the driver came down and told us we had a wheelchair to get off.”
At this time, Ms Wang tried to reason with the bus captain: “Why can’t you talk well? Why do you have to shout? Why didn’t you tell us that the wheelchair is going down?” The 7-second viral clip did not capture this.
The video sparked controversy and affected her life, she has reported the case to the police
Ms Wang pointed out that the dispute arose because the bus captain’s actions touched a raw nerve in her. In responding to the 7-second video clip, she explained: “I mean you’re a bus driver, you should know what you’re going to do, you should say you have a wheelchair Come down, there’s no need to yell at us, we don’t owe you anything.”
She believes that bus captains have been trained to know that they must first inform passengers that they have wheelchairs and need to get off the bus, rather than keep shouting “wait a minute” inside the bus, and passengers outside the bus have no idea what is going on.
She also did not understand why netizens only recorded part of the fracas and did not put the entire exchange between the bus captain and her online. “She is taking it out of context. Is she trying to get something? She is already attacking my reputation like this, and I can’t live a normal life now.”
Ms Wang said she asked netizens to take down the video, but was rejected and blocked. She reported the case to the police on Monday (14 March). Police confirmed they had received the report and were investigating the situation.
The post Punggol woman who shouted at bus captain said captain yelled at them first appeared first on The Independent News.