JUTC had to get tough

Garnett Roper, Guest Columnist

Sunday Gleaner columnist Martin Henry, having written a column ('JUTC swipe unjust', April 13, 2014) about what he considers unjust and unfair business practices of the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) in seeking to boost its revenue, has since resiled from the statements he made in that article.

He did backtrack on the comments while he was a guest on the RJR weekly news-review discussion programme 'That's a Rap!'. Henry indicated that he has written more than he knew (my words) because he simply did not have the information. One wonders why he did not inform himself before committing his comments to writing.

It is in the public interest that the JUTC set the record straight in respect of the charges made in that column by Martin Henry.

Limited-liability company

The JUTC is a limited-liability company owned by the Government. It is governed by an act of Parliament and is regulated by the Transport Authority. The JUTC has a licence for the exclusive franchise for the Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region (KMTR). There are service standards that are enforced by the Transport Authority (TA). These include the obligation of the JUTC to provide 25,000 seats to sufficiently transport the commuting public in the KMTR each day. In order to fulfil this obligation, the JUTC has invited private bus operators, as JUTC subfranchisees, to supply 5,000 seats on select routes in the KMTR. This is not a surrender of the JUTC exclusive licence; it is in order to perform its exclusive franchise.

In 2001, when the JUTC first contracted private operators as subfranchise operators, there was a total of 192 fifteen-seater buses and seven 30-seater Coaster buses. These were largely restricted to the service provision in communities where the physical infrastructure cannot accommodate the larger JUTC units, hill routes and in areas like Naggo Head in Portmore to Spanish Town with the peculiarities of commuter patterns in that area. The average remains the same until in 2010 when a further 300 Coaster buses were given subfranchises to operate on JUTC routes, including its trunk routes.

From as far back as 2012, the JUTC indicated that it would not be able to sustain the level of subfranchise operators. It did so by offering private operators licences for a reduced period of six months, rather than the traditional 12-month intervals. At each renewal, operators were made aware that their licences were unlikely to be renewed, and certainly that the company intended to reorganise the subfranchise system.

New licence invitation

In November 2013, all operators, which number 386, were advised that the licences would not be renewed when they expired in March 2014. They were given written instructions that operators would be invited to apply in January 2014 on the basis of a bidding process, in which the criteria and scoring would be very transparent to provide the JUTC with the 5,000 seats required to fulfil the terms of its licence. The bus company honoured the timetable it indicated and has held discussions with all the stakeholders, including the TA, the Cabinet and Portfolio Ministers Dr Omar Davies and Dr Morais Guy, and the transport ministry, and it has met ad nauseam with the operators themselves. It has also been very forthcoming with media interviews and the likes.

The weaknesses of the column written by Martin Henry are not merely the deficits in information, they are more so the inflammatory nature of the language used. He spoke about "licences being unilaterally pulled". Licences were never pulled; they expired. Of 469 operators in the system in September 2013, 319 have been included in the new system.

The JUTC has made every effort to ensure that the system of allocation of subfranchise licences was completely transparent and that at every stage operators were fully briefed as to the criteria and the routes available. The company remained available to the operators for consultation and discussions. Meetings were held at the highest levels, including with the prime minister, at the request of the operators. Every opportunity was given to fully ventilate the concerns and to take on board the feedback from the operators.

In this context, the suggestion by Martin Henry that the JUTC unilaterally pulled licences, and his remark by inference about arbitrary selection of some operators, borders on infra dig and inflammatory. The JUTC rejects the suggestion and inference of arbitrariness or high-handedness in the selection process.

Additional buses added

Minister Omar Davies took the decision to increase by 30 the number of Coaster buses to be part of the system in 2014. He further, to the chagrin of the management, allowed these 30 Coaster buses to operate on the JUTC trunk routes. The JUTC analysis indicated that it is giving up J$270 million in revenue annually by granting these 30 operators subfranchises on its trunk routes.

Minister Davies indicated that he took the decision to allow these operators because he believed that their expectation that their licences would have been renewed was entirely reasonable based on the number of years that they had been operating in the system. The JUTC has, therefore, sought to recover less than 10 per cent of the revenue in fees that it is foregoing by allowing 30 operators on its trunk, high-yielding routes. To give up J$270m in revenue and earn in its place J$24m in fees cannot be said to be exploitative, or, as Martin Henry has erroneously claimed, "hol' down and tek weh". It is, instead, a fair price and good value.

The JUTC readily concedes, in respect of the notion of commuters being made to pay fines of J$100,000 for using illegal operators, that this would not be just if that were not what the law required. The ad that gave that impression to the public has since been pulled by the JUTC. However, the Road Traffic Act does state the offence:

46-(1)

Any person who:

j. Being a passenger in any motor vehicle reasonably suspected to be a vehicle conveying passengers for hire or reward without being duly licensed as a public passenger vehicle in its appropriate class, on being so required by a constable refuses to give a statement as respects his presence in such vehicle and as to whether he is being conveyed for hire or rewards; shall be guilty of an offence.

46-(2)

Any person who contravenes the provisions of subsection (1) shall be liable on conviction before a resident magistrate:

a. in respect of an offence under paragraph (a) or (b) of that subsection, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a penalty not exceeding $100,000 or to both such imprisonment and penalty[d1]

b. In respect of an offence under paragraph (e) of that subsection, to a penalty not exceeding $5,000.

The JUTC is not the maker of this law and is only seeking to assist the police in identifying breaches of the traffic laws. This law has been on the books for decades and is still the law today.

Garnett Roper is chairman of the JUTC. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and garnettroper@hotmail.com.