Bus company defends driver who left child with stranger

A bus company is defending a decision by one of its drivers to leave a six-year-old girl with a stranger after confusion over where the child should be dropped off.

The girl, who lives in Piha, west of Auckland, was travelling home from school alone on the bus when the Ritchies driver arrived at the terminal outside Piha shops.

Ritchies director Andrew Ritchie said today the woman driver was relieving for the usual driver and was unaware of a pre-arrangement to drop off the girl with a caregiver at an earlier Piha stop.

The father of the girl has complained to the company about his daughter being dropped at the wrong place.

Mr Ritchie said he sympathised with the father's anxiety, but he understood the driver asked the girl where she lived and she said "Piha", so the driver dropped her outside the shops leaving her with a local woman.

"I don't like it but on the same token it wasn't clear," Mr Ritchie said. "Perhaps she (the driver) should have taken her to the police station or depot back in Henderson."

He said Ritchies was a public bus service, not a taxi service, and drivers were being advised not to organise private drop-off arrangements, or to otherwise run them by the company so everyone understood what was happening.

"We've got poor old drivers sitting on the side of the road for 20 minutes because they don't want to leave kids until their parents turn up," he said.

"It's not really the driver's responsibility to do that, but they do it through their own caring natures."

Mr Ritchie said unfortunately children do get off at the wrong stops and drivers don't necessarily know where they are supposed to get off.

- NZPA