B.B.A. Writes U.N.D.P. Requesting Buses as Grants
The Belize Bus Association, B.B.A., has written to the United Nations Development Fund, U.N.D.P. essentially requesting that buses be given as grants to conduct business. In the letter, written on September fifth, the B.B.A. seemed to chide the organization. The association then went on to state that it was not invited to sit at the table along with the U.N.D.P., the Ministry of Transport and the Belize City Council to discuss a pilot project that would involve the granting of three electric buses to the commuting public. In addition, the letter says, “The Ministry of Transport and the Belize City Council do not have any investments or relevant experience to execute the pilot”. So, the B.B.A. went on to propose that the pilot project be executed with the existing stakeholders and that to avoid disputes, a lottery system can be used to grant the buses among its members. On the other side of the equation is the Minister of Transport, Rodwell Ferguson, who told us that as the ministry presses forward to improve the service, it will decide who will use the three electric buses.
Thomas Shaw
Thomas Shaw, President, B.B.A.
“All we are saying is if we get a grant, which we don’t have to pay back and you have your existing operators out there that have mortgages of nine or ten or twelve percent interest rate, if you’re operating a free bus, more than likely you’re going to see profits from it. And I believe that we as bus operators are the stakeholders in this industry. So the letter was straightforward to U.N.D.P. I don’t know if when they had the consultation if they realized that there’s an industry and the industry is actually owned and operated by private entities. It’s not owned and operated by the government.”
Rodwell Ferguson
Rodwell Ferguson, Minister of Transport
“The Ministry has never said that it will control the buses and right now we are contemplating that we have to work with some entity from the private sector to be able to run the transportation, in particular on the western route. We are still in the implementation stage, so they should have come to us and gotten more clarity before they went and sent the letter to the U.N.D.P. but they’ve already done it already.”
News Five contacted the U.N.D.P. today to get its reaction to the B.B.A. letter, but we were informed that the organization just received the letter on September twenty-third and is still in the process of responding to the association.
