Bus drivers must attend training

Bus drivers working with the new public transport operator would have to attend extensive and regular training courses to improve the level of service given to commuters, Transport Minister Austin Gatt said yesterday.

A total of 405 bus drivers - 215 owners/drivers, 10 owners and 180 employed drivers - accepted a 10-year job guarantee against redundancy with the new operator by the time the deadline expired on Thursday evening.

Dr Gatt said only three bus owners had decided not to sign the agreement they were offered. The government therefore bought a total of 440 buses from the fleet of 508: 315 of 377 old buses and 125 of the 131 modern low-floor type vehicles.

Sixty owners of old buses and four owners of low-floor buses opted to keep their vehicles and are therefore entitled to 10 per cent less of the compensation. Owners of the old buses will each receive €103,000 while those who have low-floor buses will get €123,000. The bus owners who signed the agreement renounced their licence and instead got a 10-year guaranteed job with the new operator with a wage of at least €9,486 a year.

This means the government has committed just over €53.8 million - as opposed to the final offer of €55 million - as compensation for the bus owners: €32,445,000 for old buses, €15,375,000 for the low-floor buses, €5,562,000 for the licences of 60 bus owners without their bus, and €442,800 for the licences of four owners without their low-floor bus.

A regular complaint of commuters, apart from the exhaust emitted by buses, has been the behaviour of some of the drivers and the way they dress.

Asked whether this complaint would resurface once the drivers were employed with the new operator, Dr Gatt said this would not be case.

He said that for the first time in history there would be a proper contract with the new service providers and specific clauses would cover drivers, their uniforms, their behaviour and the continuous training they required. Penalties were contemplated if the contract was breached.

Dr Gatt staunchly defended the money being spent to compensate bus owners for their business and their bus, which was an investment they had made.

He said he was surprised with the criticism of the compensation levelled by the Chamber of Commerce, Enterprise and Industry, among others. He disagreed that the reform was not a priority for the country.

"I'm sorry to see not everyone agrees people have a fundamental right to compensation. Apart from a legal obligation, it was our moral duty to compensate," he said.

"In the 1980s, the Nationalist Party fought hard for this right and, now, the same party in government has to give due compensation where it is owed. Otherwise, the case would have ended up in court and the country would have had to fork out more in damages," he added.

Dr Gatt said the compensation was calculated on contracts sold over the past years at an average of €113,000. The average compensation bus owners were given amounted to €108,000.

Asked how the compensation would be funded, Dr Gatt said it would be financed by Transport Malta. He promised it would recoup the amount through tariffs it charged, adding no new tariffs or taxes would be introduced to make up for the expense. The country would no longer spend €8 million a year on subsidies for the public transport service, he added.

By yesterday at noon, the government gave prospective bidders the latest information on how many low-floor buses they would have to buy and how many drivers they had to take on. These have until February 19 to submit their bid.