Ill-fated bus was blacklisted by police
The bus that plunged into a ravine off Genting Highlands yesterday had been blacklisted by the police.
The bus that plunged into a ravine off Genting Highlands yesterday had been blacklisted by the police.
Checks by
Malaysiakini
showed that while the bus has been blacklisted by the police, it is not on the Road Transport Department's (JPJ) blacklist.
This is according to the JPJ website.
When contacted, a JPJ spokesperson said the police blacklist referred to accumulated summonses, with police traffic summonses being separate from JPJ summonses.
However, she said, the JPJ cannot issue any statement on the bus crash yet as it is still awaiting a report from the police.
A representative of the bus company, Genting Highlands Transport Sdn Bhd, which owns the bus, said she does not have any information on the blacklist.
"The person in charge of this matter will be in soon, so I advise that you call later," she said.
Several newspapers reported today that survivors claimed that the accident, which killed 37 people and is said to be the worst in Malaysian history, had resulted from a brake failure.
The 44-passenger capacity bus was ferrying 53 passengers at the time of the accident, which occurred near the Chin Swee Temple on its journey back to Kuala Lumpur.
Authorities said that more than half of the passengers were foreigners from China, Bangladesh and Thailand.
Newspapers also reported that the driver, Lim Kok Ho, 44, was among the dead who were found at different sections of the slope where the accident took place.
Lim is said to have had several years of experience as a bus driver.
According to a Health Ministry spokesperson, Hospital Kuala Lumpur had conducted autopsies on 30 of the 37 deceased as at 1.30pm today.
Of the 30, 14 are Malaysians, three foreigners from Bangladesh, Nepal and South Korea, while the nationalities of the remaining victims are yet to be ascertained.
Seven of the 16 survivors are Malaysians. The rest comprise four Bangladeshis, three Indonesians, a Thai national and a South Korean.
Rescue workers this morning resumed their search in the ravine, which is 60 metres deep, off Km3.5 of the Genting Highlands road.
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