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A whopping US$50 million or J$3. 5 billion. This was the cost for 250 of the 720 buses bought 10 years ago for the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC), operators of public transportation in the Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region (KMTR), which are now wrecked and in some cases vandalised.
The bus depot at Lyndhurst Road where over 150 are parked, now cannot accommodate the full complement of wrecked buses. Hence some are parked at the Rockfort and Ashenheim road depots. The current JUTC management believes somebody should account for the waste of the tax dollars. The management attributed the “destruction” to a high rate of accidents, which involved 80 drivers who accounted for 374 accidents over two years. Up to August 2007, Advantage General, the company which insured JUTC buses, was hit with 3,000 claims with potential liability in the region of $184 million. These claims covered accidents involving buses between June 2005 and August 2007. All the claims are outstanding, said a JUTC spokesman.
Since the new management took over, losses which were running at $140 million monthly, was cut by 50 per cent. But the company is still hurting. It now plans to write off and dispose of the wrecked buses, possibly selling them to scrap metal buyers.
And the refurbishing of 100 buses to beef up the working fleet is going ahead. But the company is still strapped for cash.
Transport Minister, Mike Henry, is examining applications for a bus fare increase, but he and his technocrats will have to satisfy the public now reeling under rising cost of living, that the ailing JUTC can deliver the kind of service to justify a rate increase.