The days of schoolchildren riding on ZRs for $1.50 could come to an end by the end of the month.
President of the Alliance Owners of Public Transport, Roy Raphael, yesterday said they have been given the go-ahead by the association’s executive to raise faresto $2 from April 1.
Raphael said that for too long now they had been agitating for duty-free concessions and nothing had been put in place to satisfy this demand.
When contacted, Minister of Transportand Works Michael Lashley promised to return a call to THE NATION. Up to press time he had not returned the call and several subsequent attempts to reach the minister proved futile.
Raphael said: “I dropped in a pothole and it cost me $600 in repairs and that is a big setback. We have to try to offset these costs since the roads are very bad and the wear and tear on the vehicles is constant.”
Morris Lee, president of the Association of Public Transport Operators, however, said he had put a proposal for a fare increase on the table of Government for consideration and had not heard anything about it. He said fares couldbe increased if Government embraced new technology, adding this would not impact on commuters’ pockets.
Last month Lashley said he fully supported PSV owners getting duty-free concessions for their vehicles.
For a number of years, both Lee and Raphael have been calling for duty-free benefits for their members, pointing out that some taxi owners already benefited from those concessions.
Raphael further said they were now being asked to take all PSVs to the Ministry of Transport and Works twice yearly now to be inspected and that this was proving to be costly for them.
“Most of our vehicles are old and they will have faults so it is a real challenge for us financially. This is why we are appealing for duty-free concessions to cushion this blow,” Raphael said.
He said they were hoping that Government would have met their requests before the dissolution of Parliament last week. (JB)
