A call for expressions of interest in running the bus service will be issued by the end of this week, Transport Minister Joe Mizzi said.
With Arriva out of the picture, public transport is being run by Malta Public Transport Ser-vices, a State-owned company, after the service was nationalised on January 2.
Mr Mizzi yesterday acknow-ledged the call was two weeks overdue – he had promised to publish it a week after the share transfer agreement was signed with Arriva.
However, he said the government had been advised by its lawyers to postpone the call until certain aspects of it were reviewed from a legal point of view.
He said the call had been drawn up except for some changes being made by the lawyers. “Unless there are any hiccups I intend issuing it by the end of this week,” Mr Mizzi said.
This will be the next step in the ongoing public transport saga that started when Arriva was awarded a 10-year exclusive contract three years ago.
The company started operations in July 2011 but called it a day two-and-a-half years down the line after it posted hefty losses and racked up sub-stantial debts.
Mr Mizzi insisted the government had no intention of keeping a nationalised bus service and wanted to hive off the service to a private operator “as quickly as possible”.
The call for expression of interest is expected to remain open for a month and in Mr Mizzi’s words, the government will be acting fast but in “a cautious and res-ponsible manner”.
On Tuesday Mr Mizzi tabled in Parliament all the documentation pertaining to the Arriva agreement, including the company’s financial statements and management accounts.
“I wanted to be transparent and this is the first time that all documentation pertaining to an agreement like this was published in its entirety,” he said, adding it dispelled criticism of anything untoward in the deal.
Mr Mizzi said any agreement with a new transport operator will be based on revamped routes that were drawn up in consultation with local councils and after receiving feedback from the public.
Transport Malta yesterday evening uploaded on its website the timetables of the new routes and was in the process of uploading the details of the individual routes.
The routes are generally based on the old network with direct buses from each locality to Valletta.
However, some of the routes between different villages and key areas such as the airport will be retained, as well as others serving outlying localities that were introduced when Arriva started operating.
Full details of the bus routes will be uploaded on timesofmalta.com.
ksansone@timesofmalta.com