Glasgow bus driver who delivered a passenger's baby on board wins UK transport award
A couple boarded Pummy Hadebe’s bus in Glasgow heading for the hospital. The baby would not wait. She delivered it herself, kept it warm with a towel from her own bag, and has now been named Frontline Employee of the Year.
15 October 2026
Photo: McGill’s Buses, via Glasgow Live
It was Saturday 29 November last year, and Pummy Hadebe was driving McGill’s number 23 through Glasgow when a couple got on at Nelson Street. They were going to the hospital, which the bus passes.
Soon after, she heard noises from the back. She stopped the bus and found the woman in a lot of pain. She rang McGill’s control room and the ambulance service, and realised as she did that the woman was in labour and the baby was coming now.
The paramedics were not going to make it. So she delivered the baby herself, laid it on the mother’s tummy, and took a towel out of her own bag to keep it warm until the ambulance arrived. Mother and baby went to hospital and were fine.
When it happened, I wasn’t thinking about doing anything special. I could see that the mother needed help and I just concentrated on keeping her calm, listening to the ambulance service and doing whatever I could until the paramedics arrived. The moment we heard the baby cry was something I will never forget.Pummy Hadebe
On 1 October she was named Frontline Employee of the Year at the UK National Transport Awards in London, an award she shares with Shabir Hassan, a Metroline driver who took an injured passenger to hospital. Earlier in the year she had been highly commended at the Scottish Transport Awards for the same afternoon.
Colin Napier, who runs service delivery at McGill’s, said her first instinct had always been to play down what she did. “She simply saw people who needed her help and stepped forward.”
“To receive an award for something that happened during an ordinary working day is very special,” she said.
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