Front seats on all Floralia buses are prioritized for the elderly and those living with disabilities

It’s usually the survival of the fittest when you try to catch a bus at any bus terminal in the country. The jostling, the pushing, and the insensitive shoving all often make for a frustrating commute. For pregnant women, individuals with disabilities or medical conditions and the elderly, it is perhaps the main reason travelling is a nightmare. Floralia is trying to change that with its announcement today that starting immediately, the first seats on all of their buses are for those whose conditions put them at a physical disadvantage. Marco Frutos, the company’s operations manager, explained. 

Marcos Frutos, Operations Manger, Floralia: “Moving forward we wanted to cement our place in the bus industry as being a new modern company in terms of uplifting the transportation sector so we focused primarily in making sure our customers, our motto is “Making your journey an experience.” So living by that we focus a lot on training with our staff in terms of giving that customer service, being able to make sure everyone is operating the right way up to standards, following the RSPs and then afterwards wer were approached by BAPDA  a couple months back with an initiative “hey we wanted to start a priority seating program with you guys.” and we were like wow wonderful we have a way to reach out to the community and we said why not ? So we went back and forth collaborating, talking and discussing about what the standards are from the outside  bringing it into Belize and then we started initially with right now launching all our buses starting today this week is the week of disabilities so now we’re focusing on launching today for all our runs and for our charter runs saying that our two first rows of seats are designated and demarcated with decals showing priority seating for the visually impaired, pregnant women, the persons who have disabilities, the elderly and those who are injured. We had that training from the initial from the first week we launched we know that some of the customers would be people with actual disabilities. We didn’t have anything formal but we did have our training informally stating that we would do that initiative from the get go but now having it more formal, having designated seats we want to make sure everyone is aware.”

This announcement could not have come at a more opportune time. The country is marking Disability Week. Love News also spoke to the representatives of the Belize Assembly for Persons with Diverse Abilities and the Kidney Association of Belize about why Floralia’s Priority Seating Programme is such an important development.