A new player with old masters has emerged in the transportation industry. Today National Transportation Limited, made its presence known in Belize City and caused some commotion in the streets. This evening one of the new buses that runs from Benque to Belize City was parked in front of Novelo's Bus Terminal after taxi-men who work in the area gave the bus managers leave to do so. This did not sit well with the Transport Department and we catch up with the story there.
Philip Jones, National Bus
"We had made an arrangement with Mr. James and management that we can go ahead and park here due to the fact that Novelo's has literally shut them out from going inside and any access period and the business for the taxi association has dropped because they are not dialoguing with the customers face to face. They have shut them out so we made an arrangement that in return for parking here we will give them customers and give them business. Now we are having problems with the Transport Department because they are saying we have no right to park here and we already made the arrangement with these gentlemen. We made the arrangement with them because they have apportion of the property from there and to about 100 yards from here and they are paying for that so basically it is like they are leasing it."
Mr. James,
"Novelo's Bus, I don't know what is the problem with their service but it hasn't been coming in like it was before. Actually we have 38 taxis registered out here and the service they are providing is not enough for us. We went and talked to the National Transport. I went and talked to the National Transport and we made a deal that if they could park here in the morning, jumped off and take off passengers and leave, in the evening we could give them the same privilege to park for a couple minutes or so, pick up their passengers and move on. In the morning the passengers make two stops, one at the junction and the other stop they do here. So on a daily basis they provide a lot of jobs for us out here."
Michael Godoy, City Traffic Manager
"You have designated bus stops in Belize City and you have areas where people, buses, are designated to park and this is not one of those areas that is authorized for the buses to park and for obvious reasons. The agreement that the taxi operators have with the city of Belize is for them to have taxi cars operating out this stand and a specific number of taxi cars operating out of this stand. I am saying to them that a omnibus is not a taxi and they do not have any authority to sublet. They can't sublet to a bus in front of another bus terminal. You see the problem that would be created?"
National Transportation Limited has four runs coming in from the Cayo District and 4 leave in the afternoon.
