An investigation published by the newspaper “Le Parisien” accuses the RATP of cheating on the technical inspections of its buses. France Bleu Paris gave the floor to a bus driver who had to reset the warning signals on a bus of the public company.
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France Bleu Paris collected on Thursday August 22 the testimony of a bus driver who had to reset the warning signals of a RATP bus before a technical inspection, while The Parisian revealed that several drivers of the company claim to have been pressured by their superiors to do the same.
The facts that Lassane reports date back to 2019, when he was on probation. His workshop manager then gave him a mission: to erase all the warning signals that were flashing on the bus’s dashboard, before taking it for technical inspection. “He tells me that the buses are not compliant, the buses are dead and that they will have to be taken to the technical inspection center”the driver testifies.
Lassane explains that his superior gave him a box for “clear all warning lights so that the buses can pass the technical inspection, otherwise there would be re-inspections, and that would generate a financial cost.” He finally accepted, after being afraid of losing his job: “I was threatened, [il m’a dit] that there was no point in me coming back to work the next day, that I could stop right away and go home.”
While he is in front of the technical inspection center, he turns off the bus and connects the diagnostic box which allows access to the vehicle’s computer, which signals to the driver all the anomalies: low tire pressure, damaged doors, pollution detection, etc.
“There it’s very simple, I did : reading codes, erasing codes”the driver continued to France Bleu Paris. “When this bus goes back to the technical inspection center, they will connect their suitcase and they will not see any malfunction”he explains. It is only after the check, a few kilometers further, that the orange lights will come back on.
“If the RATP respected the rules, there would perhaps be between 20 and 30% fewer buses in circulation”assures Ahmed Berrahal, a machinist-receiver and CGT union member at the RATP, to France Bleu. “There is a problem, the RATP lets its buses run with orange lights for six, seven months”he denounces.