The Belize Bus Owners Association has expressed its discontent in a press release issued on August 7th towards the ministry of transport in their recent decision to award all three (3) Electric Vehicles (EV) buses donated by the European Union (EU) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to a single operator - Westline Bus Co. Ltd. Their release states that " the Minister of Transport had informed members of the BBA that the three EV buses would be put out to tender, and that the intention of the Government was to allocate the EV buses to Bus Operators across the three zones (North, West and South)." End quote.
But now, it's all going to one bus line.
In an interview with Westline's owner he claims that the association is being disingenuous and they knew that a single operator would have been selected to run the buses.
Sergio Chuc, Westline's owner
"Officially I got a call from the ministry I would say somewhere about 3 weeks ago. Unofficially, I knew two months ago, but officially I got a call and then to send the contract to the contractor general to make sure everything was in order and it followed the laws of Belize."
"We are in training right now, and I say we, my driver, as we speak are in a training at the San Ignacio town council conference room one of the buses is down in San Ignacio. They have the expert from BYD that is there explaining to them every single aspect of the bus. Yesterday they made a test run with it. They drove around town and actually they went all the way up to Cahal Pech, climbed up that big hill with about 15 or 16 people in the bus, it went up nice and smoothly and came down nice and smoothly. And then they are learning all the ins and outs of the electrical system. It is very complicated and its is a new technology we don't have in Belize and nobody knows about that we don't have experts in it. So it is a learning process for them but we hope that the data we are going to gather from these buses will help us understand the technology and will show that it is Economically viable to get them into Belize."
"They knew and I think Mr president of the Belize bus owners association has withdrawn from those comments. I think he has made it public that he does not associate himself any longer with that letter and those comments."
"The truth of the matter is I only heard about that letter 2 days ago and when it was brought to me I said this is very disingenuous and they were apart of the process all the while and from the very onset one year ago they knew it was going to be one company that was going to handle all 3 buses."
Chuc says that the buses are expected to begin runs from Corozal to Benque on the first week of September once the charging ports have been installed in Benque and Corozal's bus terminal.
We did reach out to BBA's Andy Shaw for an interview but up to news time, we were unable to speak to him.
We do know that the Bus Association claims that Westline is unable to service a fair percentage of its existing runs and that it does not have buses on standby as it claims to.
Chuc says that is not correct and that the Bus Association is inventing stories. He says waistline has, quote, "always been servicing all our runs and continues to do so on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, on Monday of this week UB started and therefore an additional three buses went into service from the western most town." End quote.
