The following events, which unfolded on September 9 between 8.15 and 8.45 p.m., have left an indelible scar in our memories.

Arriva has lost credibility and our custom indefinitely and has proved once again that its bus drivers’ etiquette and customer service is abysmal, pathetic or simply non-existent.

This was to be our daughters’ first bus trip to Mellieħa alone to see their grandmother. They are aged 14 and 12 respectively and mature enough to act independently and rationally.

As parents accompanying their children on their first school trip, my wife and I walked our daughters to the bus stop facing Independence Gardens in Tower Road, Sliema, to catch the No. 11 bus en route to Ċirkewwa. After a wait of 45 minutes, the bus finally emerged, albeit overcrowded (as is normally the case).

The woman driver reluctantly accepted our children and the two other passengers waiting in line. After half an hour we received a telephone call from our elder daughter saying that all passengers had been dumped unceremoniously at Pender Gardens in the heart of Paceville.

We later got to know that the driver had informed the passengers before asking them to disembark that the bus was, in reality, a No. 13 bus, and would venture no further than the chosen dumping ground. The bus then sped off, destination unknown!

We then received a second phone call, even more disturbing and emotional, that our daughters had managed to board another No. 11 bus and that a fight had broken out, with the driver leaving his post and responsibilities behind him, thus ridiculing his employers and himself by engaging in a physical confrontation with a passenger, and with total disregard to his passengers, including our daughters. As our children were standing directly behind the driver, they were shoved and jostled and almost suffocated in the ensuing fracas.

I really do not wish to hear Arriva’s pathetic excuses for such unprofessional behaviour from both its drivers. What I do expect is immediate disciplinary action. My wife and I filed a complaint but have heard nothing to date, even though I was promised an update.

One can imagine that, at that moment of panic and trauma, our children did not think of taking the number plates of the buses in question. But it should not be too difficult to trace a bendy bus No. 13 (disguised as a No. 11 bus) travelling towards Pender Gardens driven by a woman, at 8.15 p.m. opposite Independence Gardens, in Tower Road, Sliema, and a bus No. 11, driven by a black driver, at around 8.30 p.m. at Pender Gardens.