Transport Board gets $5 million from Consolidated Fund for creditors
Parliament yesterday approved a supplementary of $5 million from the Consolidated Fund to assist the Transport Board in meeting debt obligations.
Leading off the debate in the Lower House yesterday morning, Minister of Transport and works, Michael Lashley said that $1.8 million of that money is to facilitate payment to Simpson Motors Limited to bring the Board’s account within the agreed credit arrangement. He went on to say that the other $3.2 million is to assist with payments to other critical creditors and to help purchase parts for buses that are currently out of the system, with the view of putting them back on the road. The goal, he said, is to get the fleet back up to the number that the Board is accustomed to.
Referring more to the fleet, the minister said that a substantial portion of the buses are 18 years and older. Breaking down the numbers, Lashley said 77 are 21 years old; 101 that are 18 years old; 29 are 14 years old and 65 are 12 years old. The latter was purchased, he said, at approximately $22 million, $340,000 each.
“Certainly we have not purchased buses since 2006 and given the ages of these buses and given the fact Mr. Chairman that the public transport runs to a scheduled service, and they have to constantly be out there servicing those routes, we expect that given the age of these buses that they would be in need of repairs,” he said.
He disclosed that a report revealed that 70 of those buses were off the road every day on account of major defects and minor defects. This, he said, led to the Transport Board employing the services of a fleet consultant which he noted came under heavy criticism. But, Lashley said this was unnecessary as the services of the same consultant had been used in 1998 when the now Opposition Barbados Labour Party was in office. His comments came as referred to the report on state-run enterprises, which has shown that utilising the consultant has been beneficial for the Board.
“…Even our reporting on the performance of the Transport Board during the employment of the consultant, is the fact that we’ve been able to bring expenditure down by not looking at the traditional sources, but of course going outside of those markets and getting some prices that brought expenditure down for the Transport Board. Indeed, the Board’s expenditure for the period April to December 2017 came down and of course it represented an extremely major decrease… and there were major savings in relation to bus repair and bus maintenance,” he added.
He said, “I remember when the Transport Board was ridiculed for engaging in repairs for transmissions for $40,000 and we have been able to reduce that significantly by purchasing reconditioned transmissions which are still working on the buses for a cost of about US$3000 Mr. Chairman and that is a fact.”
Minister Lashley added also that efforts have been made to refocus the Quality Assurance Department, to do more in-house repairs, rather than outsourcing the work. He said this was done by way of the purchasing new equipment particularly for the Mangrove, St. Philip and Speightstown, St. Peter depots. (JRT)