Yvonne Ba­boolal

A smok­ing pop­corn ma­chine trig­gered the fire alarm and caused the evac­u­a­tion yes­ter­day of the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port Port-of-Spain head of­fice, de­lay­ing the in­stal­la­tion of the new board of the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) for near­ly an hour.

Works Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, min­istry of­fi­cials and mem­bers of the new board were hur­ried out of the of­fice at the cor­ner of Rich­mond and Lon­don Streets in the pour­ing rain and tak­en to a build­ing op­po­site.

Min­istry staffers milled around un­der the eaves on the side­walk while fire of­fi­cers checked out the build­ing. Af­ter near­ly one hour the all clear was giv­en to re-en­ter the build­ing and Warn­er hand­ed out the in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment to the new mem­bers.

New PTSC Board mem­bers

De­vant Ma­haraj – chair­man

Car­ol Mer­ritt – vice chair­man

Bene­dict Arm­strong

Car­ol Er­i­ca Noel

Jee­wan Man­groo

Ash­vani Ma­habir

Clive Nunez

Gor­don Ram­jat­tan

Chair­man De­vant Ma­haraj gave a short ad­dress. He promised that what the pub­lic want­ed from PTSC, they would now get. "They want to know what time the bus­es are show­ing up, to be trans­port­ed to their des­ti­na­tions in com­fort and to get away from traf­fic. He said: "Our pri­or­i­ty is to de­liv­er. We in­tend to hit the ground run­ning." Re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from the me­dia on whether the new board can change the lack­adaisi­cal cul­ture of PTSC, Ma­habir said it was pre­ma­ture to say. "We are not ful­ly au courant with what's hap­pen­ing in the es­tab­lish­ment but we have a team of dy­nam­ic, re­sults-ori­ent­ed, dri­ven peo­ple. "I am con­fi­dent the board will pro­vide the lead­er­ship to break the cul­ture that ex­ist­ed be­fore." He said the first board meet­ing would be held next Tues­day and the ob­jec­tive was to be re­sult-ori­ent­ed. Warn­er said said he was cer­tain the new board would take "us from where we are to high­er heights." He added: "We are very for­tu­nate to have this cal­i­bre of per­sons.

I am con­fi­dent they will have some new strate­gies." Warn­er said May 2015 was a sig­nif­i­cant date link­ing PTSC and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship." "In May 2015, PTSC will be 50 years old and the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship will have com­plet­ed five years in of­fice. This is some­thing to which both of us can work to­wards," he said.

Ted Joseph, deputy gen­er­al man­ag­er of op­er­a­tions at PTSC, said soon mem­bers of the pub­lic may be able to call from home and find out when the next bus was leav­ing. "We are look­ing at the use of a num­ber of tech­no­log­i­cal tools," Joseph said. PTSC al­so is seek­ing to ex­pand its rur­al ser­vice and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of go­ing more than one place on one tick­et. PTSC gen­er­al man­ag­er, Sel­wyn Sylvester, said there were plans to move the cor­po­ra­tion's garage to a big­ger space, use state of the art re­pair equip­ment and en­sure the avail­abil­i­ty of parts.

He said they aim to im­prove the sched­ul­ing of bus­es.