And in other news, the Ministry of Transport and the Belize Bus Association held a meeting in Belmopan today to streamline village bus runs - hopefully making for a better commuter experience. While they have settled things with the highway runs, they're now tending to the concerns of those smaller operators who make short stops but have a long list of complaints. Courtney Menzies was there and has this story.
As the Ministry of Transport continues to work on improving the services on the highways, today they were focusing on the village runs. They held a meeting today with the bus operators who handle those runs to hear their concerns.
Dr Louis Zabaneh, Minister of Transport
"We know that as in the highway sector, that they also have challenges of excessive competition on the roads, they have unique settings because many of the roads that they traverse are in poor condition. So as you heard today, they shared some of that with us but basically it's not to find out how we're going to move forward after having done that on the highway system, what are the kinds of ideas. Some of them suggested that perhaps we could look at company structure where they could now become shareholders and benefit from economies of scale, lower costs, that sort of thing so this is the first of a number of meetings, we're going to have meetings in the districts then come back together and make a decision as a sector on how we move forward."
And for most of them, one of their biggest concerns is competing bus runs. Dr Zabaneh explained how it came to this where multiple companies have permits for similar times.
Dr Louis Zabaneh, Minister of Transport
"We have had sadly since the mid 2000s after the situation with the consolidation with the Novelo company where at that point in time before that collapse occurred, the consolidation had ended up with the Novelo group and then the James Bus Line. After that when the DFC fiasco if you will happened, ministers of transport and the transport department gave out permits to persons who were asking for these road service permits across the countries in a manner that is clearly not in the best interest of commuters because you ending up having a lot of competition with all these road service permits being issued so many times it was because some political favor was being done or whatever the case may be. There was not a proper system in place rationalizing public interest because clearly that's what we ended up with and why we had to come up with the solutions we are now engaged in with the National Bus Company on the highways and now seeking solutions for the village run operators."
Zabaneh added that the next step now is to take it to Cabinet.
Dr Louis Zabaneh, Minister of Transport
"In a couple weeks we'll be presenting to Cabinet recommendations on how to move in tandem with the economic structure, the legal structure that would help to bolster what we have already put in place, meaning that you want to be able to have a better system of determining who get permission to be functioning on the different roadways. The present setting has village runs and highway runs separately and that will continue but clearly along lines that have to do with different kinds of economic benefits that are being provided to the operators and to the commuters so on the highways, we expect hat the standards will have to be higher because now you're serving larger numbers of people moving from one terminal to the next and then besides the classifications then we are also going to be proposing a franchise system where by having a corporation with proper administration and proper systems in place to secure standards and quality then a franchise may be able to offer than company certain benefits for it to continue to grow, certain discounts and exemptions from possible taxes just like how in other sector you may have fiscal incentives so in a similar way, having it in an organized fashion however under a franchise system, that is the proposal we will be making."
And for the BBA, they also believe that today's meeting was productive.
Phillip Jones, President, BBA
"It was a very productive meeting whereby that operators were informed on how we can improve better of the service and there's help that can be afforded by either us forming an association or a company and the information shared was very receptive by the members and we're looking forward to see how we can improve the rural area and the villages at this time."
