The Ministry of Transport, Works and Water Resources has entered an agreement with the repairs and maintenance firm, United Commercial Autoworks Limited (UCAL), which officials say should result in growth and major improvement in the operations of that company. During the signing ceremony on Friday, officials indicated that the memorandum of understanding (MOU) made provision for critical training and building of the capacity of UCAL staff. “There is still some work to be done, but what we have been able to do is look at the skills set we have in the ministry and start to look at how we can work with them to train their staff to help us to complement what they are already doing to improve the operations of UCAL,” said Minister of Transport, Works and Water Resources Santia Bradshaw. The MOU also makes provision for the ministry to provide UCAL with various equipment to help ease the challenges of the lack of equipment to repair buses. It also provides for changes to be made to the structure of UCAL in order to improve its operations. Bradshaw noted that leading up to the MOU, an audit of the operations of UCAL was carried out in order to identify specific areas for improvement, strengthening and building technical capacity. She said the agreement was critical as the Government seeks to phase out diesel-engine buses and transition to a promised Mass Transit Authority. Declaring that the MOU will allow the public transportation system in Barbados to “get back on track”, Bradshaw said the partnership also spoke to the government’s commitment to empowering and enfranchising workers. “With this type of agreement, they can then enter into discussions with banking institutions or otherwise because they have assets now that they can be in a position to leverage. That gives them a better position than they are in currently and they will be able to transform the operations of UCA to make it more efficient,” she explained. She noted that there were currently some 49 electric buses on the island and another 10 were to be imported by year-end, with others to follow over time.
She said recent discussions were held regarding the planned Mass Transit Authority and a “transition committee” would be put in place to work with labour and the Government for the transition to take place. Officials agreed that there have been many ups and downs at UCAL over the years, but agreed that the partnership with the Ministry of Transport was the beginning of a journey in ensuring that workers can be “empowered” and operations are improved. Bradshaw said three locations have been examined for a new state-of-the-art home for operations of UCAL for the future – its current Weymouth, Roebuck Street location, the MTW workshop and the Mangrove facility. “Each of them requires some level of capital investment to improve on. The key thing is that in the interim they will have to operate at different locations. Eventually, the hope is that they have a state-of-the-art facility that will be able to accommodate all of the equipment that they require to repair,” said the minister, though not giving an indication of a timeline or possible cost. General Secretary of the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) Senator Toni Moore welcomed the partnership, saying it was an important step in the transformation journey of UCAL. “What we will have to be doing during the next 9 to 12 months is working to ensure at the administrative and management level and the technical and non-management level that it is adequately resourced,” said Moore. “This MOU is a commitment to the financing and resourcing of UCAL at different levels for efficiency. The journey continues,” said Moore. “We are committed to seeing this through to the end. We do not anticipate that UCAL will only be servicing the government, but this represents an opportunity to allow UCAL to branch off and take off in all the other revenues that were intended for it back in 1997. So this is a big one for UCAL workers and the BWU workers and Barbados in general that we can actually do what we want to do.” (MM) ]]>
