Compensation for Gozo buses doubled

Gozo bus owners will be getting almost double the sum the government had offered at the beginning of talks between the two sides.

This results from an announcement by the Transport Ministry yesterday that it had reached an agreement with the Gozo bus owners as a result of which they would receive €40,000 in order to relinquish their licence and bus, for a total cost of €3.1 million.

At the start of the talks, the government had offered Gozo bus owners €23,000. They complained they were being discriminated against when it emerged that Maltese bus owners were being offered something in the region of €100,000 for each bus.

Eventually, even the bus owners in Malta got an increase on what they were initially offered (€103,000 for the old buses and €123,000 for low floors) but, proportionately, the increase was not as high as that of their Gozitan colleagues.

The Transport Ministry had justified the initial offer to the Gozitan bus owners on the basis that it was worked out on the present income as was the case in Malta. Moreover, the ministry pointed out that the situation on the sister island was different because the Gozitan drivers would still be able to operate an unscheduled service and would not suffer as much as the Maltese operators.

When asked about the shift from its initial position, the ministry said the compensation, as with the outcome of any negotiations, "was identical neither to the government's initial negotiation position nor the operators".

The ministry justified the increase by saying that, unlike in Malta, the Gozo bus service was not and never had been subsidised. If the government wanted to subsidise the sector for a better service in Gozo it would "require a considerable subsidisation, paid for by the more profitable transport activities in Malta".

"The government has accepted the argument that, should such a subsidy be paid directly to the present operators, the value of the business would increase and it is against that reality that the compensation should be estimated."

According to the ministry, a sum of €3.1 million to move from the "utter shoddiness of today's so-called service" and provide Gozo with a high quality public transport service was "money well spent".

Unlike the compensation package in Malta, the package only covers the public transport licence and the operators would still be able to use their vehicles as coaches.

The ministry said it understood that the operation of public transport in Malta also had to cover the losses of the Gozo service but added it was confident that, even with the internal subsidisation of a Gozo service, "the Malta and Gozo service can become profitable in the foreseeable future and no longer rely on public subsidy to survive".