The 40 Unscheduled Bus Service vehicles helping out with the public transport service from Mondays to Saturdays are costing the government €35,472 a day.

Four fewer vehicles are used on Sundays, when the cost is €32,572. All UBS vehicles are being driven by coach operat-ors’ employees.

Transport Minister Joe Mizzi gave this information in answer to a series of parliamentary questions by Opposition MP Ċensu Galea. He said although passengers using UBS vehicles were not being asked to pay the drivers, they were still expected to buy tickets from ticketing machines or from ticket-selling personnel.

Bus passengers were still expected to buy tickets from machines or from ticket-selling personnel

He said the number of tickets sold to non-residents in 2013 was 2,698,922. These included tickets for two hours, one day or a full week.

For the same number of tickets, the Maltese would have paid €3,736,072 less.

Arriva transferred 357 vehicles to the government before it left. The number of buses actually used in the service was 231. There was a total of 81 articulated (bendy) buses, of which only 68 had been in use.

One bendy bus had been gutted by fire and four others were cannibalised for parts.

Four buses were used for driver training purposes.

Forty-one others, previously used by the Malta Transport Authority, had been transferred to Arriva Malta Ltd in 2010 but were not used for the service because they were extensively damaged.

Mr Mizzi said that every day, 15 to 20 buses were being repaired or given maintenance.The total number of employees transferred from Arriva to the Malta Public Transport Services (Operations) Ltd, which had taken over the bus service, was 975.

Among them, 696 were drivers, 38 were in administration and human resources, 33 in the commercial section, 151 in operations and 57 in engineering. Of the 975, 104 were part-timers.