Bus owners to lay off workers from Monday

The Public Transport Association said yesterday it will be handing out notices of termination of employment gradually to 40 of its workers as from Monday, after the minister responsible for transport Jesmond Mugliett failed to contact them for further discussion on the current impasse.

The association on the one hand, and the Public Transport Authority and the ministry on the other are at loggerheads over the amount of subsidy, the association is claiming. The government is saying it would not budge from the Lm1.1 million in subsidy while the association is aiming for Lm1.7 million.

PTA president Victor Spiteri said yesterday that the association had on Wednesday put formally to the minister the bus owners' offer to accept an additional Lm300,000 over the Lm1.1 million instead of an additional Lm600,000.

Mr Spiteri said that in a letter to the association yesterday, the minister had added more threats of reducing the subsidy if the industrial action goes on.

"The association is prepared to meet the minister anytime to discuss this issue but in view of these threats, the association has decided to start laying off the 40 workers," he said.

Mr Spiteri added the notices of termination will not be issued all at one go.

Asked whether the bus owners were prepared to accede to the appeal by the St Luke's Hospital authorities to resume services to the hospital from other locations apart from Valletta, Mr Spiteri said the associon that when there is industrial action at the hospital others are affected badly.

When contacted, a ministry spokesman said the minister was prepared to continue the discussions which, however, have to include measures on how to reduce the costs of running the bus service.

The PTA was ordered last week after the government refused to raise the Lm1.1 million subsidy it is offering to the Lm1.7 million figure demanded by bus owners.

The PTA had ordered all bus routes, except routes 11, 19, 22, 45, 48, 49, 62 and 70, to stop running at 8 p.m. Route 75 (the direct bus service linking towns and villages to St Luke's Hospital) was also suspended as a sign of protest. Bus owners also threatened that about 40 of its dispatchers would be laid off.

The Roads Minister retorted saying the government would deduct Lm2,000 a day from the subsidy until the PTA lifted the directives, warning that another Lm5,000 would be cut for every worker laid off by the association.

Reacting to comments by Mr Spiteri in an interview with The Times yesterday, the Malta Transport Authority (ADT) said that through an agreement reached last year the PTA had promised to abide by the conclusions of the Halcrow report.

The ADT said the agreement in question laid down that as soon as the report is submitted, discussions on bus route operations for the 2005 - 2009 period would start between the ADT and the PTA.

"If an agreement is not reached within 90 days from the start of talks, the authority would have the right to start talks with other parties interested in providing the public transport service or any part of it," the ADT said it had been agreed.

Therefore, it added, the agreement did not provide for a specific date by which the report is to be concluded. Mr Spiteri said the PTA required five months to seek technical advice about the Halcrow report before it could start talks on a revamp of the service with the government and the ADT.

The PTA president said the completion of the report had been postponed and effectively took 10 months to be completed, adding that the ADT had set March 2005 as the completion date.

"Halcrow commenced their assignment last January and the report was concluded in July. At no point in time was the PTA ever advised that the report had to be completed by March," the ADT said, adding that the bus owners' association was obliged to start negotiations once the report is submitted to it.

"In our letter dated August 3, the authority proposed to hold weekly meetings with effect from the week commencing on August 22 in order to discuss the findings of the report and its recommendations.It is not unreasonable to request the commencement of discussions immediately as throughout the last seven months the PTA was consulted and provided with a number of interim reports prepared by Halcrow," the ADT said.

The authority said it had made it clear that the report prepared by Halcrow was a basis for discussion. The intention is to work together with the bus owners to reform the scheduled bus network to improve the level of service and to ensure that the service operators provided is sustainable in the long-term.