Kochi: The crew of public transport buses don’t have the best of reputations but a woman conductor proved critics wrong when she rushed to the rescue of a ticket checker who fell and injured himself recently when the driver applied a sudden brake near Elamkulam.
Not only did she give him the first aid he needed, but also made sure doctors at the hospital he was taken to were clear about the kind of injury he had suffered and gave him the right treatment.
Her efficient handling of the situation did not go unnoticed as Dr Philip Abraham, who is on the staff of a well known city hospital, happened to be travelling on the bus on November 11. So impressed was he with conductor V. Vineetha that he later sent her gifts and appealed to the KSRTC to honour her.
Dr Abraham recounts that the driver applied his brakes suddenly as a car ahead of the bus stopped abruptly as it reached Elamkulam. Ticket checker, Krishna Pie who was standing on the elevated rear portion of the low-floor bus was thrown forward on the ground and lost consciousness under the impact. Conductor Vineetha who also fell, however, recovered quickly and rushed to his aid.
“Although she was injured herself, she gave him first aid efficiently and proceeded to give a detailed description of the incident to the duty doctor at the hospital he was admitted to. Refusing to accept the duty doctor’s verdict that there was nothing to worry about and the ticket checker had merely suffered an aftershock, she suggested he should be checked for internal injuries and wouldn’t allow him to be shifted to another hospital further away,” Dr Abraham said in a letter to the Ernakulam Assistant Transport Officer. The ticket checker is clearly in her debt as doctors later realised he had suffered internal injuries as the conductor had suspected.
“The doctor has sent Vineetha a special gift and we are also honouring her,” said Ernakulam ATO, Radhakrishnan Nair.
