It is the last working week of Mayor Wobine Buijs van Oss. She was mayor there for fourteen years. She came back to Oss economically after masses at pharmaceutical company MSD in Oss. And it turned out when it was necessary to also have a civilian mother. The accident with the Stint in Oss where four children were killed was a turning point. “Then the Ossenaren closed me in the heart,” she says in the TV program Kraak on Wednesday. Asks on.
She came to Oss in 2011, just when the feature film ‘De Bende van Oss’ appeared. Economically it was also a bit of a gang in Oss. Closing the research department of MSD chopped firmly. The various governments pulled everything out of the closet to retain the pharmaceutical industry for Oss.
“I didn’t really know what I was starting.”
Wobine Buijs was involved in the rescue operations as a senior official in the province. She saw the mayor as a means to complete that mission as a director. “I didn’t really know what I was starting,” she says now.
Her first year was not easy, as a VVD member in the SP bulb that Oss was certainly then. “It was difficult to come in, I had to fight.”
“What can I mean for someone who has lost his child, of course nothing at all.”
After a while it went better, but the real turning point came in September 2018. A drama so sad that Oss shoulder stood on shoulder. Four children were killed by an accident on a railway crossing with a cargo bike, De Stint. Another child and a supervisor were seriously injured. “This is of course a day that you hope will never come,” Buijs said a few hours later in an improvised press conference.
She managed to meet the right tone. The same day she visited the parents. “Then you get in the car and then you think, what can I mean for someone who has lost his child, of course nothing at all.” She came up with: “What would I like in such a situation from a mayor? I wish she would build a wall around me. That is exactly what I did.”
That year she was named the best director of 2018. But for her it was even more important that she had won the confidence of the Ossenaren with her warm -blooded performance. “I needed that several times later.”
“I put that in a box, but that has to be opened sometime.”
When she looks back, she also thinks of the drama with the homeless Arie den Dekker. He appealed to the municipality but ultimately found no hearing there. For the long time, he set himself fire on the doorstep in front of the town hall in the summer of 2020. He died a short time later. “I couldn’t let my feelings speak there,” says Buijs. “I put that in a box, but I have to open that one more time. I still have to get to my feeling.”
For that, Wobine Buijs will get on Monday next Monday, then her last working day is every chance. She remains administratively active, for example as chairman of the Social Economic Council Brabant, but there will be a lot of free time for which not yet has many concrete plans. “Driftwood,” she says, “I just look at where I bob”.
‘Kraak. Asked by ‘It is broadcast every Wednesday at 5 pm and then repeated. The program can also be seen on Brabant+.
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