Public service vehicle operators are renewing calls for the government to resume stalled talks on long-promised duty-free concessions, warning on Thursday that delays in granting relief for struggling owners are creating safety risks for commuters and driving up maintenance costs.
Chairman of the Alliance Owners of Public Transport (AOPT), Roy Raphael, told Barbados TODAY that the unresolved issue, which has continued through successive administrations, is posing a safety threat to commuters who ride in the vehicles and an untenable maintenance cost burden for PSV operators.
Raphael said most of the vehicles currently transporting passengers across the country daily are “very” old.
“Some of them are over 40 years, but 80 per cent are more than five years old,” he said. “As a result, we could experience major [mechanical] issues and lots of downtime. So, we are making a special appeal to the government to give us concessions. When we first approached them, they placed some demands on the table, which we would have met, though not a hundred per cent. But we are willing to return to the table.”
But the AOPT chairman also acknowledged that ongoing indiscipline by some PSV operators is creating a stumbling block to advancing their cause for concessions.
Raphael said: “While we are ready to argue duty-free concessions for our members, we are urging the owners to be mindful that the behaviour of some public service vehicle operators continues to create issues for us to come to an agreement with government because the last thing this government put on the table is that we need to get our act together… which we have seen an improvement, but not across the board.”
He continued: “We are appealing to those owners to be mindful that because of some of the continuous behaviour with the public transport drivers, it is creating issues for government to make decisions, although they would have gone ahead and given TAP [Transport Augmentation Programme] owners duty free, without waiting on the usual five years.”
He disclosed that the absence of duty-free concessions for buying new buses is having a significant impact on the industry’s operations.
“The maintenance on these vehicles is very high,” said Raphael. “We are finding that the insurance companies now, while we are looking to pay reasonable premiums, some insurance companies are saying that some of those vehicles are high-risk because of their age. So, it is having a significant impact on us. Yes, we are going green… the government has started the $3 million project to encourage operators to go green, but we can only do 15 vehicles at $3 million.”
He revealed that the association has already started discussions with the commercial banks to try to obtain additional financing.
“But obviously, with the duty-free concessions, it would give an opportunity for those persons who don’t want to go green to bring their vehicles into Barbados,” Raphael argued. “I suspect that if government approves the duty-free, we should have at least 60 per cent of the agencies converting to newer vehicles… this is under five years. Whereas we want our members to ride in comfort, we also want the visitors who use our service to ride in comfort as well.”
The PSV industry leader also disclosed that the association will be taking steps to ascertain the possible economic impact any duty-free concessions to the sector will have on the government’s purse.
He said: “The organisation is prepared to put together a special committee very shortly; and this committee will be made up of a number of persons which include financial operators. We are hoping to get the insurance companies on board, the banks, to see what impact it will have on government giving 80 per cent of the transport sector duty-free concessions. Obviously, all of them would not take it up immediately. But for us, the petrol, diesel, is one of our greatest issues. Some of our operators consume as much as $4 000 to $5 000 a month in fossil fuel; and even with newer vehicles we can see a reduction of that.”
Raphael concluded: “We want to send out that appeal to government immediately, to start having discussions with us, and let’s see what impact it would have on government issuing the duty-free concessions at 80 per cent, and what we will do in terms of making sure that the public gets to and from work and so on, in a comfortable way.”
emmanueljoseph@barbadostoday.bb
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