Global Courant 2023-04-18 16:54:53
A bus driver from the company La Perlita was the victim of a new robbery and received a strong blow to the face this Tuesday morning in Moreno: he suffered a cut on his face. On Sunday, another unit was attacked in the same area: the windows were broken and the driver was injured. With these, there are now four attacks against company employees and passengers in the last week.
According to the account of his companions, Daniel —the driver attacked—, was traveling on line 501. Around 5 in the morning, two criminals got into the unit to rob him.
In that struggle, Daniel was robbed and they took his cell phone, a thousand pesos and a wedding ring. Despite the fact that he handed over his belongings, he was assaulted. At first it was reported that they hit him with the butt of a pistol, although he later revealed that it could have been with a mitt. His colleagues denounce that the information is withheld from the company to “prevent them from going on strike.”
The assault occurred in the Reja Grande area, one of the hottest spots in the GBA. “The Suburb is totally unsafe, it happens everywhere. The compañeros are tired, we cannot go out to work in these conditions. Here there was only one checkpoint in the center, we entered the neighborhoods alone,” said Alejandro, a compañero from the La Perlita company.
“They got on as passengers, they attacked him in the face. We are alone. He is fine, grateful to be alive, we don’t know how these types of people can react,” he added.
The driver was transferred to the Mariano and Luciano de la Vega hospital, where he was treated for a blow and cut to his right cheekbone.
A source with access to the case told the Télam agency that one of the hypotheses being investigated is whether it was an event linked to the fact that the company did not adhere to a service stoppage carried out by others to demand security.
Pablo Fernández, delegate of line 501, affirmed that the insecurity situation “is no longer valid, we have been saying it for a long time”, but he defended himself against criticism from a sector of employees about the decision not to immediately call a strike. “If we stopped today, it was the third consecutive strike and we ended up financing the strikes with people’s money. We are looking at the measures that we are going to take, to preserve wages,” he explained.
“We have to see what is best for people, we have to try other things, because we are on strike and they continue to attack drivers,” he added and said that in the next few hours they will hold a new meeting with the authorities to analyze the measures of security.
“The police give us the usual response, they say they are going to carry out operations, but it is the short story: they carry out operations in a neighborhood and others are left unprotected. The criminals know how the operations are,” he said.
Succession of robberies in the 501
It is the fourth attack suffered by drivers and passengers of La Perlita this week and one more in the long list of robberies against bus drivers from different companies that have been repeated in recent times. The most violent, the crime of Daniel Barrientos, driver of line 620 murdered by criminals during a robbery in La Matanza.
This case highlighted the serious situation that the Buenos Aires suburbs are going through in terms of insecurity and especially highlighted the fear and lack of protection experienced by the bus drivers.
Last Sunday, a violent attack ended with an injured 501 driver in Moreno. According to the testimony of his companions, he was loading passengers when he saw two young men running. He waited for them, but when they got on, they started shouting at each other with the passengers.
“They began to yell with some kids inside the bondi and I heard the glass burst, the partition that isolates the driver’s seat from the passengers, and there he began to yell at one to lower it, and another got up and told me ” He has a weapon, stop the bus,” said one of the drivers.
After pressure from the passengers, who threatened to hit them, the two young men got off.
Another of the insecurity events occurred last Tuesday shortly after 10:30 p.m. Two thieves got on a bus on line 501 and brutally attacked the driver, who was alone.
After stealing his cell phone, 400 pesos and his shoes, one of the assailants hit him on the head with a rifle butt and also cut his face. A union representative said that the driver did not resist and was also beaten.
The victim was making the last trip in the direction of the Moreno terminal when the two men got on the bus two blocks from the Cuartel V police station.
When one of the assailants got off the bus, near the roundabout that joins routes 24 and 25, the one who was on top of the unit hit the bus driver on the head with his butt. The two robbers then escaped, while the victim was treated at a hospital.
Alejandro Aranda is a driver of line 501 and lamented the violent assault suffered by his partner. “It was a very ugly situation. The bus driver attacked is called Matías and he is 30 years old. They cut off his face at the cheekbone. He passed in Cuartel V, near the police station,” he said.
“They stole everything from him: from his documentation to his shoes,” he told Clarín Aranda, who demanded that the transport company intervene and take measures to care for its employees.
“The company throws all the responsibility to the Government and in practice it does not help us to solve the problem. We need them to at least complain so that there are (police) troops on part of our route, there are times of the day when the streets are empty and it is dangerous to work like this,” said the 501 driver.
He also warned that the company had decided to cut some services and that, for this reason, there are users who are affected and end up reacting violently with the drivers. “It would be nice if we weren’t exposed like that,” he said.
During the early hours of Tuesday, another bus from the 57 line was attacked with stones on the Camino del Buen Ayre, near the town of General Rodríguez.
The drivers denounced that the attacks are common in the area and demand more security, since they maintain that they throw stones to cause them to stop and then assault them.
