African bus driver tells of racial abuse

An African-born bus driver today revealed the horrendous litany of racial abuse he has faced on his route around Dublin.

Nana Ouwandensng, who is originally from Ghana but has lived in Ireland for the past five years, said a man racially abused him, threatened to kill him and spat in his face as he simply went about his job.

The Dublin Bus driver said he suffered the abuse after he asked a passenger to stop smoking a cigarette on a bus in the southside of Dublin last Sunday evening.

“He stood up, nearly hit me. He was saying all sorts of things but I was just doing my job. All I wanted was the comfort of my passengers so I insisted that he should get off the bus,” the father-of-six said.

“Then eventually he got out. But he spat in my face, he wanted to headbutt me. He was so close to me that he wanted to headbutt me. So I just tilted back.

“He was pretending he was going to kill me, all sorts of things.”

The brave driver revealed he was frightened during the abusive confrontation and he had to restrain himself from reacting after the man spat in his face.

“It was very bad. I felt very very ashamed, I couldn’t tell my wife when I got home,” he said.

Mr Ouwandensng, who has worked for Dublin Bus since 2003, revealed this is not the first time he was attacked on his route on the southside of the city.

He said the confrontations would occur around once every two months.

The driver added: “You meet the bad guys on those days.”

Mr Ouwandensng revealed another incident also occurred on the same route with a group of men who were smoking.

He added: “I told them and as they were getting off they spat.

“I was about to react and the guy just punched me in the face and got off. I think I learned since from that, you know I tried to be calm.”

Mr Ouwandensng said that during the racial abuse other passengers on the bus do not offer him help but they may be afraid to get involved.

A spokeswoman for Dublin Bus said the incident on the southside of the city had been reported to officials, however, the driver had not wanted to take the complaint any further.

She said the company was proud of the way he handled the incident.

“From an eye witness statement it was a threatening situation and he handled it capably. He was looking out for the other passengers. He did a great job,” she said.

The spokeswoman said incidents that extreme were rare.

Around 200 or 8% of Dublin Bus drivers were originally from places outside Ireland.

“All drivers receive equity and diversity training courses about different nationalities within the workforce and the customers,” she said.

The National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism said there were 41 racist incidents reported to its offices by non-governmental organisations for victims between May to October 2004.