By Roble Bashir
Immigrant bus drivers sometimes feel unsafe during their work in Finland. They face many challenges especially when they work at night.
Some white Finnish passengers try to take advantage of bus drivers with immigrant backgrounds. They may, for example, show an expired ticket and argue with the driver that it is valid. Others may show a ticket bought with their cell phone that is not valid on most buses. They may get into an argument with the driver and claim that he doesn’t know the rules or his job properly even if he has over fifteen years experience on the job.
On other occasions, a passenger may start to drink on the bus. Some passengers may even disobey the driver’s request for them to stop drinking alcohol inside the bus. If the driver insists, some passengers may start to hurl abusive insults at him like the n-word. Sometimes bus drivers can even be assaulted while at work.
One such driver that was assaulted was from Somalia. He asked a group of passengers to stop smoking and drinking inside the bus. Instead of cooperating, they grabbed a fire extinguisher and used it to spray the driver.
Some white Finns often ask the driver if the bus is going to Africa. Not only are these passengers disrespectful, but they show their arrogance and racism.
It’s easy to understand why some bus drivers feel apprehensive about their jobs.
Well the goverment is not doing any job to prevent these incidents, racism isn’t even that important to Finns anymore, because it doesnt effect their lives. Even hard working honest immigrants can’t do their job properly. The question is, how can be monitored racism that happens in work places? ive experienced so much racism at work, one incident was, wehn a working partnet started calling me names and shouted at me that, why im here, that im not wanted in here, that i should go back to Somalia, i made a complaintment about him, but nothing was done, instead i got to be blamed beause of a lie he told about me. As an immigrant you’re always seen as guilty no matter what.
D4R, this is a minor one while compared other problems we face here from white finns, sometimes my eyes become tearful when i remember to what happened some people of our community and this leaves me a long-lasting effects to my life. For example, when you see a mother that her son was murdered and when she heard the news became sudden semi-paralysed of her legs and unable to go to the toiled without support. When you hear from that Somali man was dead when he jumped from the window, after of group Finns barged into his room and you know the reality is not that way. Because if Akaaro body is found outside of his apartment window, with tored clothes, visible wounds on his skin, lay bleeding. His room was broken into, the door left open with cracks, holes through it. Therefore, Akaaro killed himself when he scared thuggish-looking guys ringing his door bell.