Transport Board denies owing TAP operators

Inaccurate and erroneous.

This is how Chief Operations Officer of the Transport Board Lynda Holder has described recent claims by Alliance Owners of Public Transportation (AOPT) Chairman Roy Raphael that the state entity owed monies to private operators in the Transport Augmentation Programme (TAP).

She said his comments were not an accurate representation of the contractual arrangements between TAP operators and the Transport Board.

Holder told Barbados TODAY that while members of TAP collect the $3.50 per paying passenger immediately, the payment for concessionary ridership, which includes school children, elderly pensioners, and other groups who ride for free on Transport Board buses, goes through a separate filing process for “waybills”, which all TAP operators agreed to.

“They submit those waybills to us and then we go through to make sure that whatever they submitted meets the requirements we have put in place. We then send all of that information to the relevant ministries…. In the case of students, it would be the Ministry of Education, [and] in the case of old age pensioners, it would be the Ministry of People Empowerment. They then do their own analysis, and they are the ones who pay, not the Transport Board. We are literally just mediatory in this situation because we also have to submit our documentation to be paid for when those people travel [with] us as well,” she explained.

The COO made it clear that the Transport Board has already facilitated the payment for September and the next payment is due in November.

As such, she said, no funds are outstanding to TAP members.

“It is erroneous for Mr Raphael, who is a member of the programme, to say to the public that the Transport Board owes them money,” she said.

In an interview with Barbados TODAY on Monday, Raphael said several operators in the TAP programme continue to complain about not getting their monies by the 15th of every month, as agreed to with the Transport Board.

“We are calling on the Transport Board [to] please pay their money…. We’ve already instructed the attorneys for the association to write to the Transport Board requesting a meeting. We are also asking the Transport Board to pay us interest after the date of the 15th because we can’t continue to survive under these conditions,” the AOPT head had said.

However, Holder said: “If at October 31st you bring in your paperwork, it then has to come into [the]Transport Board for us to send through our own internal system. Let’s say that takes us a week, that maybe pushes us to November 6th, 7th. We then send that information over to the respective ministries, and then they have to go through it.

“It is nearly impossible for you to get the money on the 15th that Mr Raphael quoted. Even though he is correct [as] that was the timeline that was originally given, we would have met with them and said based on the way the system has to work, that is not going to be a practical timeline.”

The COO said that despite the lengthy process, the Transport Board has worked tirelessly over the years to reduce the time between receiving data from TAP operators and paying them, but emphasised that the board was up-to-date on all payments owed to TAP operators under the current agreement.

She said the Transport Board has always sought to keep the process as clear and streamlined for operators as possible.

“We have met with the TAP drivers on more than one occasion. We have met with the owners who in some instances are not the same person, to go through the way the process is done,” Holder said.

shamarblunt@barbadostoday.bb