Public Transport Must Cut Carrying Capacity by Half!

Kareem Musa

One of the other COVID-19 prevention changes that we can expect will be in public transportation.  According to Minister Musa, the crack down on public transportation to cut the spread of COVID-19 will see buses and boats reduce their carrying capacity to fifty percent. This will allow for less overcrowding and reduce chances of virus transmission.

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs

“One of the proposals that came to Cabinet and was approved is in relation to exactly that – the buses and the boats traveling between Belize City, San Pedro and Caye Caulker. We are proposing that it should have a maximum of fifty percent of the capacity of the vessel or the bus. So, if the bus has sixty seats, you can only have thirty passengers on your bus at anytime and as a best as possible the passengers on the buses have to observe social distancing. So, it is a radical shift and it is one that the bus operators will not be happy with but we have to come down heavy with. It is in fact one of the close quarters; everybody on the bus there is overcrowding sometimes and so we are going to have police officers strategically located on the highway to check these buses regularly to ensure that that they are following that fifty percent rule that will be put in place on Saturday.”

Marleni Cuellar, Host, Open Your Eyes

“Is that going to be tied to price control?”

Kareem Musa

“I think that is something the Ministry is tweaking at the moment and we will definitely have to hear from the Minister of Transport in that regard and come up with the proper pricing when it comes to the bus travels and the boat travels.”