Natl. Transport laying off 160 employees
And to add to the economic woes, within days of Christmas, there is news of massive layoffs in the transport industry. According to the management team of National Transportation Services Limited, it is expected that one hundred and sixty workers will have no reason to celebrate come December twenty-fifth. The bus company says that the workers will be laid off because of major losses to the company due to the recent zoning system implemented in October. That move by G.O.B. essentially reduced the number of routes N.T.S.L. was operating and according to the company, is jeopardizing an eleven million dollar investment to upgrade and modernize their services. News Five’s Jose Sanchez spoke to the operations and human resource managers at National Transport to find out how soon these workers will be out of a job.
Philip Jones, Operations Mgr., Natl. Transport
“Since October nineteenth they had implemented zoning and they had discontinued our runs from the west a hundred percent, they had discontinued the runs from the Ladyville area hundred percent. In the western area we have fifty percent of our runs that were taken away. In Ladyville we have ten busses from five to nine every fifteen minutes. In the southern area we have a total of thirty two runs on a daily basis providing service from Punta Gorda, Placencia and Dangriga. And in the western area we had a total of fifty-eight runs. Since the zoning system has been implemented on the nineteenth of October, we had seventy percent of our run taken away.”
Larissa Madril, Human Resources Mgr., Natl Transport
“Due to the runs not been given back to us, we have all of our workers from the south, fifty percent of the workers from the west and all of our Ladyville transport workers have become redundant to our company that we have to put them on redundancy leave. In total, it will be like one hundred and sixty employees from those areas, completely together.”
Philip Jones
“We had approached the department of transport numerous times, lobby with them, trying to let them listen to us to let them know what will be the repercussions if they cancel runs from the south and the west and the northern area and we also had tried to lobby with the minister of transport but were unable to so we had to take the matter to court and presently we have been successful in the court that the magistrate grant us judicial review. At this point in time we’re in a position that it is redundant now with the staff that we have.”
Larissa Madril
“We don’t have any other choice. The company is forced to do this, so the process starts today. And we gonna get in contact with the labor law to make sure that we follow by the procedures that are beneficial to each employee.”
“People need to realize we are a national company now. We are no longer The Novelos and we started as a new team with different staff, different people, everything. It’s not a, how you say it, its not that they should be criticizing, we’re not asking for sympathy. We’re just asking them to realize you know what, this is affecting not the company but we the workers and the commuters also.”
David Novelo, the C.E.O. for National Transport, was unavailable to comment on the issue because of an ongoing case before the courts between the company and the Transport Department. In November the company got an injunction which suspended schedules for the northern zone. They go back to court in March to ask the court to determine whether or not the permits are unlawful.
