Students protest bus rates

With an estimated one thousand students and workers commuting from Orange Walk town to Belize City on a daily basis, the announcement early this week that Urbina’s and Escalante bus lines had been bought by the Venus bus line caused quite a commotion. Orangewalkenos didn’t take the situation lightly; especially when they found out it was going to cost more to ride the same buses. This morning, four of them launched a campaign of protest on the radio waves and decided to stop in at our studios as well.

Cristina Coc, Commuter

“We’re more concerned about the service rather than who took it over. Because first of all, we’re here to address the price, the extreme price that went up, overnight, you could say. Because it started yesterday I was not aware of this and up until today; it’s now up to $4.50 whereas we were paying $2.00 as students one way. It’s it like more than double the price.”

Zeidi Leiva, Commuter

“This is the first step that we have taken into consideration, this is what we have done, peaceful demonstration. But if nothing is being done, some students are prepared to go to Belmopan on Friday to protest this, because we were not adequately informed of these changes. Because had we not been listening to the radio on Monday we wouldn’t have known that both Escalante and Urbina’s had been sold to another bus company.”

Elena Baeza, Commuter

“When a bus company or a company is taken over, we always expect better service and so far we haven’t seen any.”

General Manager for Venus Bus line, Froylan Gilharry says in order to avoid serious financial trouble, he cannot maintain the former rates of the other bus companies. He says the company will have to keep the Venus Orange Walk to Belize City rates of $4.50 for regular customers, $3.50 for workers and $3.00 for students. Although he can’t deliver the same door to door service the commuters have grown used to, Gilharry says the buses will adhere to strict schedules to ensure everyone gets where they need to go on time.