Public transport operator Arriva has apologised “unreservedly” for the chaotic start to the new bus service but company officials expect delays to continue for the next few days.

Arriva managing director Keith Bastow said the company expected the service to run on schedule by the end of the week when 55 British drivers would enter the service to fill the gap created by 56 drivers who yesterday failed to turn up for work.

Mr Bastow made it clear that, unless there were exceptional circumstances, Arriva did not expect the errant drivers to continue working for the company any longer.

On Sunday, about 70 drivers failed to turn up for their first day of work with Arriva, a decision that disrupted journeys on most routes and caused a lot of confusion. Passengers were left waiting for long periods on bus stops as the timetable went haywire. The situation was the same yesterday with long queues reported at main hubs as buses ran late.

Even drivers reported being stranded after the bus they were meant to board failed to turn up or arrived more than an hour late.

“I was assigned to the Floriana park-and-ride but the driver I had to replace never turned up with the bus and I ended up doing nothing,” a driver, who preferred to remain anonymous, said.

Mr Bastow said 56 drivers did not report for work yesterday and the vast majority were drivers or bus owners who used to work in the previous service.

He said the company brought 55 UK Arriva drivers to temporarily fill in the gaps in the service but these would only be fully deployed by the end of the week after being given a crash course on the routes. They will work in Malta until the company engaged and trained enough Maltese workers.

“We hope to be on track by the end of the week,” Mr Bastow said.

One of the drivers who did not turn up for work, Twanny Cassar, said he could not accept the hours the company was expecting them to work.

“Our contract only spoke of a split shift once a fortnight. Had I known about the roster I would have declined the job immediately. The moment the company changes the roster I will be ready to start working,” he said.

Mr Cassar was not fazed by the company’s threat to lay off drivers like him who failed to turn up for work and insisted nobody from Arriva informed him officially that the roster would be changed. “I am not ready to work all those hours for a whole week for €200. If this is the case it pays me more to register for work,” he said.

Mr Bastow said the company had expected to experience some problems given the massive change the service had to bring about but the shortage of drivers exacerbated the situation.

As a result, some drivers who were trained on particular routes had to be deployed elsewhere to fill in the gaps. This seemed to cause some problems yesterday as passengers complained that drivers were not familiar with the routes they were assigned to.

The same applied for buses that had stickers showing routes that were unrelated to the ones they were operating on.

“Our priority was to get the service running and, so, if a bus or a driver was needed on a different route we simply shifted operations,” Arriva director Piers Marlow said.

The two officials, who were visibly exhausted, addressed a press briefing yesterday afternoon to explain the latest developments.

They started by apologising to passengers for the delays and poor service. “We unreservedly apologise to the travelling public for the problems experienced on the system The main issue revolves around the drivers, who failed to turn up for work and it is not an easy problem to fix,” they admitted.

Asked whether drivers were adequately trained, Mr Bastow said the company provided 50,000 hours of training but difficulties arose with drivers who worked for the previous bus service.

“We did not cut any corners during training but we did have limited time with previous bus drivers, who were still committed to the old service,” he said, adding that training commitments had to continue until September.

Mr Bastow said six buses had suffered mechanical breakdowns and two of them had passengers on board but played down the problem given that Arriva had a fleet of about 250 buses.

He also admitted there were some problems with the software, which was tailored for Malta but added the problems were being resolved.

Mr Bastow said the service in Gozo had worked “pretty well”.

Meanwhile, the General Workers’ Union and the Union Ħaddiema Magħqudin appealed to employers not to take disciplinary action against staff who arrived late at work because of the massive delays experienced on the bus service.

The unions said workers were not to blame for what happened and augured that the problems hounding the public transport service would be solved.