Bosses pressuring bus drivers to complete safety checks are endangering passengers, a union spokesman says.
But the company which owns the bus damaged by fire in Dunedin this week has rejected the claim.
After a Go Bus Transport bus caught fire and left a 200m oil slick in Dunedin on Thursday, two passengers were assessed for smoke inhalation.
Tramways Union national secretary Kevin O’Sullivan, of Wellington, said he was concerned the bus could have caught fire due to a lack of maintenance.
By law, heavy vehicles, including buses, had to undergo safety checks before leaving the depot.Bus drivers had time built into their shift to undertake the safety check, such as looking for oil leaks.
In a recent visit to the Dunedin Go Bus depot, Mr O’Sullivan says he saw drivers given three minutes to perform the checks.
It was not enough time to complete the checks, he said.
He contacted the police commercial vehicle investigation unit in Dunedin last month with his concerns.
"I was surprised that weren’t keen or interested but they might be now, in light of this incident."
Other union members around the country were allowed five minutes to complete checks and still felt pressured to get on the road.
Go Bus South Island operations director Nigel Piper, of Christchurch, said the 1997 MAN bus which caught fire in Dunedin was one of two in the Dunedin fleet.
The bus would be repaired and returned to service.
"We are going through a fleet replacement programme in Dunedin and it will be one that gets replaced in the not-too-distant future."
The incident was being treated seriously and engineers from Auckland and Christchurch arrived in Dunedin yesterday to investigate the cause of the fire.
"Preliminary indications are it was due to a split in the hydraulic hose which allowed some hydraulic oil to get on the manifold."
Go Bus staff in Dunedin were given at least five minutes to complete the safety check, he said.
The Dunedin fleet was regularly maintained and he had no concerns with its safety and neither should the public, he said.
A police spokesman confirmed Mr O’Sullivan had talked with police about his concern.
The unit believed there was no legislation around a check and such inspections were best practice in the transport sector.
A New Zealand Transport Agency vehicle inspector had investigated the bus that caught fire and there was no suggestion the cause was anything more than an "in-service failure".
A Transport Ministry spokesman said The Land Transport Rule: Passenger Service Vehicles 1999 did not specify particular checks needed to be made before each departure, he said.
"There is no set amount of time that needs to be allowed for ensuring that a vehicle complies with the rule’s requirements, and the amount of time it’d take would depend to some extent on the vehicle."
However, as the bus was at a place of work, the bus company had an obligation under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015.
