PSV body rejects notion of regulating routes, salaries in the sector

The head of the body representing owners of private transport has rejected the idea of government regulation of their routes and workers’ salaries.

Responding to the suggestion made by a government senator, Chairman of the Alliance Owners of Public Transport (AOPT) Roy Raphael told Barbados TODAY the sector would have to be heavily subsidised, similar to the Transport Board, before any consideration could be given to regulating pay.

During his contribution to debate on the Road Traffic (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 2022 in the Senate on Wednesday, Senator Gregory Nicholls suggested that treating the public service vehicles (PSV) sector like a public utility where routes are regulated and even salaries set, could help to stamp out unsavoury behaviour exhibited by some operators.

“They [PSVs] would be owned by private individuals but they would be run in a system where you could create an algorithm to determine how the vehicles are distributed across the routes to service the public. Like in any organised society, there is not a free-for-all in public transport, and I think that is where we have missed the boat,” he said.

Although agreeing that the transport sector needs an overhaul if legacy problems plaguing the system are ever to be truly fixed, Raphael pushed back against Nicholls’ suggestions.

“Yes, it is okay for Senator Nicholls to make that assumption because he was the former Chairman of the Transport Board; it is not as easy as that. Basically, what he is recommending is [similar] to the Transport Board that is subsidised by government. [They] can afford to put drivers on dead routes and still have to pay them…. It is very difficult for us to allow persons to go on the route and still have to pay them if they don’t make any money,” the AOPT chairman contended.

He pointed out that the Transport Board’s maintenance costs are also subsidised, while a PSV owner can, on average, spend thousands of dollars every month to maintain their vehicles, mainly because of the poor state of the island’s roads.

“We have seen an increase in maintenance on our vehicles, particularly on a lot of bad roads that we have in Barbados. Some of the operators threatened to take their vehicles off of these routes if something is not being done about it.

“The argument is that we are paying high transfer fees, from $1 to $1 000; we continue to pay permit fees and other things that could land us basically between $5 000 and $6 000 a month or even more, to ply our vehicles on routes,” Raphael pointed out.

He further argued that several of the challenges in the sector stem from a lack of cooperation across the board from the Government and businesses who should be working with PSV operators to ensure a better level of service for the public.

“As far as I am concerned as chairman of the association, a lot of the things that we are saying go on deaf ears. People want things to happen, but companies do not want to get on board to assist. We move 80 per cent of the travelling public and most of them are workers who drive the economy. Yet when we approach the companies for assistance, you get a lot of persons making promises,” Raphael said.

He called out Minister of Transport, Works and Water Resources Santia Bradshaw for ignoring calls from the AOPT to meet and address problems in the industry.

“Do you know how long we have been trying to get a meeting with the Minister of Transport to address the issue relating to people wanting to work after six o’ clock, and the terminal closes after six?

“We are still waiting on her to call us into a meeting to discuss issues affecting public transport that we know can be resolved,” the AOPT official lamented.

shamarblunt@barbadostoday.bb