Buses to run normally on Monday

Route buses are to run as usual on Monday as the Public Transport Association has decided to wait and see how talks on the insurance cover for the fleet would develop over the next months before taking action.

The association warned last Monday that they might not run a service due to insurance problems.

Association president Victor Spiteri has now informed the bus owners who were not allowed to pay their premiums by the omnibus pool in June that their insurances would be renewed.

The agreement was reached during a meeting on Wednesday between the Malta Transport Authority, the omnibus pool and the transport ministry.

Until it was ratified, the Malta Insurance Association had accepted to insure the buses for the month of July, the PTA said in a statement.

A quarter of the bus fleet had not been allowed to pay its premiums in June.

Mr Spiteri had said that the extension of the insurance cover for one month was not good enough for the Public Transport Association, which could not understand why the other 75 per cent of the fleet had paid its full premium for the year, while the remaining quarter could not.

Mr Spiteri said the association's committee yesterday also discussed the recent enforcement of a legal notice stipulating that buses could not be hired to carry out tourist trips, or for tourism purposes.

The association was expecting to have meetings on the issue with the authorities, and said that if the government insisted on continuing to enforce the legal notice, something would have to be done.

It did not make sense not to provide groups of tourists with excursions on vintage buses, which they often requested, he said.