Subsidies will not rise by Lm0.6m, minister insists

Roads Minister Jesmond Mugliett said yesterday there was no way the Lm1.1 million subsidy offer made by the Malta Transport Authority (ADT) would be topped up by Lm600,000 as the bus owners were demanding.

In view of the Public Transport Association's (PTA) decision to stop a number of routes at 8 p.m. the ADT would be deducting Lm2,000 a day until the PTA lifted its directives. Another Lm5,000 would also be subtracted for every worker laid off by the PTA, Mr Mugliett said.

Bus owners decided on Thursday that public transport on most routes will stop running at 8 p.m. from yesterday, with only routes 11, 19, 22, 45, 48, 49, 62 and 70 running as usual from Monday to Friday.

Route 75 (the direct bus service linking towns and villages to St Luke's Hospital) was to be suspended from today, keeping only the route from Valletta to the hospital. The PTA said that as from Tuesday 40 employees would be dismissed gradually.

In a letter to PTA president Victor Spiteri yesterday, Mr Mugliett said the association's directives went against an agreement signed by the government, the ADT and bus owners last October.

"The government will take the necessary steps to protect the public interest if the actions are not withdrawn," Mr Mugliett said.

Bus owners had come close to a bus strike in the first week of July over the subsidies issue. Action, however, had been suspended after the parties accepted the intervention of two mediators.

The Roads Ministry said earlier this week the bus owners' request was not justified because their income had increased following the "considerable" 5c increase in fares since last January, which meant that the PTA's income rose by Lm1.5 million. It said income from tickets was expected to go up from the Lm5 million last year to Lm6.5 million by the end of this year.

Contacted for his reaction, the PTA president said that during a meeting with the minister and the ADT chairman last week, the association had shown it was prepared to accept Lm1.4 million instead of Lm1.7 million in subsidies but that offer was turned down.

Mr Spiteri insisted that the sum being proposed by the government did not effectively cover maintenance and fuel costs. While maintenance costs for bus owners had gone up to a yearly Lm 3,800 for each bus, when compared to the Lm2,800 in 1998, the government wanted to grant less than what was being given seven years ago.

On the fuel issue, the PTA was arguing that buses used a minimum 16 gallons of diesel a day when compared to the 14 gallons consumed daily in 1998, mostly because traffic had increased drastically and most bus engines were now automatic.

However, Mr Spiteri said, the subsidy issue was an excuse masking the government's real intention, which was "to reduce the number of bus operators".

An experts' report drawn up recently for the ADT by Halcrow International, sections of which appeared in the media days ago, said Maltese buses were "grossly underutilised" when compared to buses abroad and that the government intended to remove the day-in-day-out shift system and the way some bus routes were set as part of a radical revamp of the system.

The report had to be completed in March but was passed on to the PTA only last week, Mr Spiteri said. It was because of the delay that the ADT and the association agreed to negotiate a financial package to close 2005, before the reform takes effect, he added.