Helsinki bus drivers' minimum age to be reduced to 18 years

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Next autumn the Helsinki City College of Technology (Heltech) intends to launch a basic vocational qualification training course for young people who have finished comprehensive school and wish to become bus drivers.
      The new training will be possible as soon as the amendments to legislation proposed by a committee set by the Ministry of Education have been passed, and the minimum age of bus drivers is lowered to 18 instead of the current 21.
     
Until now driver training has been provided almost entirely as part of re-employment training for adults. For example, after having participated in a re-training programme organised by an employment office, many immigrants have become good bus drivers, while many Finns who have been re-trained have not liked their new jobs in the long run.
      The annual demand for new qualified bus drivers is approximately 700, of whom around 300 to 400 are needed to fill the vacancies in the Greater Helsinki area.
      Heltech students Anna Toivonen, Janne Päivärinta, and Sami Pakkanen have wanted to become professional vehicle drivers since they were children. Their hopes will come true in a year. Sami Pakkanen and Janne Päivärinta are interested in the goods transport option, while Anna Toivonen intends to become a bus driver, as being a social sort she wishes to meet people.
      One reason for the reform is the chronic shortage of bus drivers, particularly in the Greater Helsinki area.
     
Particularly transport companies have been critical of the present situation, even though the re-training of immigrants is said to have been quite a successful exercise.
      "However, some of the unemployed Finns who have been re-trained as bus drivers have had motivation problems, and not all of them have been suitable in the job", notes Heikki Alanko from bus operator Pohjolan Liikenne. The numbers speak for themselves: a hundred new drivers were recruited by the company in 2002, and only around 20 are still in the field.
     
Heltech's basic vocational training course in transport and logistics will admit some 127 students each year and it will last for three years.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Re-trained immigrants to alleviate shortage of pharmacists (10.1.2007)
  Helsinki and Tallinn compete over Estonian bus drivers (1.8.2006)

Links:
  Helsinki City College of Technology (Heltech)

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