The cash-strapped Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) spent close to $20 mil­lion last year on me­chan­i­cal and body re­pairs, up­hol­ster­ing and spare parts to keep its age­ing fleet of bus­es op­er­a­tional.

“We don’t make a prof­it,” gen­er­al man­ag­er Bashir Mo­hammed ad­mit­ted, as he high­light­ed the chal­lenges faced by the com­pa­ny as it seeks to gen­er­ate rev­enue, pro­vide a re­li­able ser­vice, ramp up its fleet and roll out ini­tia­tives to woo pas­sen­gers.

The PTSC was al­lo­cat­ed more $306 mil­lion last year to man­age its op­er­a­tions but gen­er­ates very lit­tle rev­enue through tick­et sales, char­ters/tours, plat­form rental, ad­ver­tis­ing space and rental of tran­sit mall space. The bulk of the bus com­pa­ny’s bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion goes to­wards pay­ing its 1,000 staff mem­bers and 609 dri­vers.

Mo­hammed said the heav­i­ly sub­sidised com­pa­ny suf­fered a de­crease in rev­enue due to a drop in the num­ber of func­tion­ing bus­es in its fleet. The sit­u­a­tion is made worse by that fact that on­ly 40 per cent of the 27,000 com­muters who trav­el dai­ly with PTSC ac­tu­al­ly pay for their tick­ets. The re­main­ing 60 per cent are pen­sion­ers and stu­dents who ac­cess the ser­vice for free.

Tick­ets sales make up 20 per cent of PTSC’s rev­enues.  

Dai­ly, it costs the PTSC $158,000 to pro­vide its bus ser­vices. Out of the com­pa­ny’s core fleet of 390 bus­es, on­ly 225 are in ser­vice which re­sults in the PTSC miss­ing 61 per cent of its sched­uled trips. It is sup­posed to be op­er­at­ing on 163 routes across the coun­try but due to the short­fall of bus­es, on­ly 62 routes are cur­rent­ly be­ing ser­viced.

Mo­hammed said he is not sat­is­fied with the lev­el of ser­vice the PTSC pro­vides to the pub­lic but does not agree with the wide­ly held view that the bus com­pa­ny should be pri­va­tised to make its ser­vice re­li­able and ef­fi­cient.

“Whether it is in pri­vate or pub­lic hands once you have the right num­ber of bus­es to ser­vice the routes we will be able to de­liv­er and meet the de­mands of the trav­el­ling pub­lic. There is so much de­mand for our ser­vice that we right now can’t sat­is­fy that,” he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Mo­hammed, many of the bus­es are “down” due to old age, so ef­forts are be­ing made to ramp up the PTSC’s re­pair pro­gramme us­ing skills with­in the com­pa­ny rather hir­ing out­side labour.

Deputy gen­er­al man­ag­er of fi­nance Davis Ra­goo­nanan said the PTSC’s biggest chal­lenge is its age­ing fleet. Some of the bus­es are 28 years old and need ser­vic­ing reg­u­lar­ly. Bus­es have a life span of ten years with prop­er main­te­nance. 

Ra­goo­nanan said PTSC spent close to $20 mil­lion in me­chan­i­cal and body re­pairs, spare parts and tyres last year.  

“With­out hav­ing a bus on the road we can’t move the trav­el­ling pub­lic . . . we can’t meet the sched­ules and can­not ser­vice our routes. So what hap­pens you have com­muters wait­ing . . . want­i­ng a bus. If a bus is in the work­shop it de­lays every­thing,” Mo­hammed said. 

He said there are plans to in­stall GPS in all PTSC bus­es by year-end and at a lat­er stage each bus will be ge­o­t­agged so that pas­sen­gers will be able to track the next avail­able bus us­ing an app on their mo­bile de­vices. 

Mo­hammed ex­plained: “Every time a bus comes in for fu­elling its mileage will be up­dat­ed which will tell us when the bus is due for ser­vic­ing.”

In its 2015 man­i­festo, the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) promised a bus fleet re­new­al pro­gramme. Mo­hammed said there are plans to ex­pand the fleet by pur­chas­ing 300 new CNG bus­es.

“The Gov­ern­ment is fi­nal­is­ing a loan arrange­ment to buy that (bus­es) for us,” he said, al­though he could not give the cost of the bus­es as he said that was still be­ing ne­go­ti­at­ed.

The first batch of bus­es will ar­rive next year with the last fleet due in 2021.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan un­der whose purview PTSC falls said talks have been held the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment to ob­tain the bus­es.

“Right now we are in ne­go­ti­a­tion with the Chi­nese Ex­im Bank for the fi­nanc­ing of the bus­es. By the time the bus­es ar­rive, PTSC will be trans­formed with its im­age and ser­vice,” the min­is­ter said.

Sinanan said the PTSC al­so needs to im­prove its cus­tomer ser­vice and ef­fi­cien­cy. 

“We need to get PTSC as the num­ber mode of trans­porta­tion. New bus­es will not solve that prob­lem. There has to be a whole cul­tur­al change by the staff and man­age­ment of PTSC. The staff has to un­der­stand that the trav­el­ling pub­lic has to be treat­ed in a cer­tain way. This is why we are mov­ing to have that cor­rect­ed. I want peo­ple to leave their cars at home and get a bus on time. That is the on­ly way we can deal with traf­fic on the roads,” he said.

Sinanan said his min­istry is al­so con­sid­er­ing in­tro­duc­ing des­ig­nat­ed bus lanes on the road net­work. He said by this method “the time a bus takes from point A to B will be sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced.”