Trade union FNV, bus drivers from Qbuzz and the Ministry of Justice and Security ratified an agreement on Monday afternoon in Emmen. This contains agreements that should guarantee safety on buses between Emmen and Ter Apel.
This concerns the safety measures that have been agreed upon over the past two years. For example, special shuttle buses are now used between Emmen station and the registration center in Ter Apel, so that asylum seekers no longer board the regular lines 72 and 73 towards Ter Apel. These buses have also been made more recognizable.
To familiarize residents with the registration center, hosts and hostesses have been deployed at the Emmer train station since the beginning of last year. There is also camera surveillance at the bus stop in Ter Apel to monitor any nuisance.
Although the measures have been in force for some time, the bus drivers are happy that the agreements are now in black and white. “We must also conclude this matter at some point,” says bus driver Dirk Visser.
‘Driving on line 73 without incident’
In recent years, there have been frequent disturbances on lines 72 and 73, which run between Emmen station and the Ter Apel registration center. So-called safelanders in particular made life difficult for drivers and passengers: they traveled without a ticket or behaved aggressively. Due to the nuisance, Qbuzz skipped five stops in Ter Apel for three weeks in June.
Things are now going a lot better on those lines, say Visser and his colleague Henri Seubers. “It is very quiet there now,” says Seubers. “I recently rode the 73. Unscathed.”
For Visser, it is especially important that communication for the residents of the asylum center is better. Agreements about this have also been laid down in the agreement with the police and the COA. “It still happens that people arrive with travel information from Arriva. He hasn’t driven here for fifteen years. That confuses people, and that bothers us.”
The signed document is mainly intended to provide guarantees to bus drivers and FNV. “So that even if we are no longer there, the agreements still apply,” says ‘chain marine’ Henk Wolthof, who was present in Emmen on behalf of the ministry on Monday. “In the past, measures introduced have been abolished at times when things were quiet. That is no longer possible.”