PTSC has 21 types of bus

SEAN DOUGLAS

OVER the years, the Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC) has accrued a fleet consisting of some 21 different types of passenger bus, this variety making upkeep hard, bemoaned a report recently laid in Parliament, the eighth report of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that examines a special audit of the PTSC by the Auditor General’s Office.

The fleet of 548 buses consists of 21 different makes and models, which averages out to 26 buses per make and model.

“With no policy as to the composition of its fleet, over the years, buses were procured from numerous and varied manufacturers,” the report said, discussing the process of fleet rationalisation.

“The maintenance of a fleet of various makes and models of buses has impacted on PTSC’s ability to source replacement parts in a timely manner. PTSC noted that this contributes to the downtime of buses.

“PTSC recognised the challenges in maintaining a fleet comprising of various makes and models of buses and in June 2014, through the Ministry of Works and Transport (MOWT), established a committee to make recommendations on the rationalisation of its fleet.” That committee in 2014 sent its report to Cabinet which then approved it.

Works Minister Rohan Sinanan yesterday told Newsday the PTSC now has a policy in place to try to standardise its fleet to about three or four brands. He said that otherwise it is a challenge to try to stock parts for 25 different brands.” Sinanan said this policy has been in place within the last two to three years, and is considered when the PTSC is doing its various tenders.

Otherwise the minister declined to comment on the People’s National Movement’s (PNM’s) recent suspension of businessman Harry Ragoonan on allegations of interfeence in tendering at the PTSC, saying, “That was before my time.”

The report urged the PTSC’s procurement be done within a framework of rationality and transparency, with all new buses to run on clean energy.

“PTSC should implement robust and stringent measures with respect to the procurement of buses to ensure value for money and transparency.”

The report bemoaned that the PTSC used some buses which were 24 years old. “The absence of a bus replacement policy meant there was no guide used to determine how long buses should be kept. The PTSC stated that buses were used until they were no longer operational.”

The cost of repair and maintenance rose from $24 million in 2010 to $30 million in 2013, but fell to $20 million in 2014.

The report said the PTSC was now in development of a bus-replacement policy document by a technical team for the nod of the PTSC board.

Factors to be considered include vehicle purchase cost, cost of money or interest rate, maintenance and repair expenses, amount of miles travelled or hours used per year, downtime costs, fuel expenses, annual depreciation expenses, obsolescence costs, and salvage value.

The PAC lamented that the PTSC had failed to properly utilise data from the global positioning system (GPS) to help save the fuel costs of its buses.

“PTSC could have saved approximately $5 million in fuel costs over the period 2010 to 2014 due to excessive idling of buses.”

Overall, the report repeatedly lamented that the PTSC was not meeting its costs, including collecting too little revenue by way of an outdated structure of fares.

“While the fares of PTSC services remained stagnant for the last 27 years, the cost of all the inputs into PTSC’s operation increased significantly over that time period.” The report said any PTSC call for a fare-hike must be tempered by the country’s current economic climate.

The report noted that PTSC has 1,959 employees (as of 2014) with a five-year wage bill of $800 million, or almost half of the corporation’s total expenditure of $1.727 billion for the same period.

The report advised, “To achieve value for money, PTSC’s management needs to re-evaluate and review its organisational structure and conduct a job analysis in areas that are highly saturated with personnel.”

The report lamented that the PTSC had been unable to reduce its high rate of accidents in the five years from 2010 to 2014, some 1,942 accidents.

The PTSC failed to meet targets in its strategic plan to cut accidents by 25 per cent in 2011 and 50 per cent in 2013, relative to 2010 as the base year.

“In 2011 the actual number of accidents was 457, surpassing the projected rate of 306 accidents by 50 per cent. In 2014, the actual number of accidents was 316, which exceeded the projected rate of 102 accidents by 200 per cent.”

The report also lamented the PTSC’s management of income and expenditure, over the period 2010 to 2014. Over that period, the funds allocated by the Government rose from $149 million to $289 million, but income fell from $105 million to $81 million, inclusive of a drop in ticket-sales from $34 million to $23 million. That full period of five years saw the PTSC’s income at $1.689 billion and its expenditure at $1.727 billion.

“PTSC has not met its legislative requirement to generate sufficient revenues to cover expenditure,” the report said.

The PAC urged both the PTSC and MOWT to do more to get the PTSC’s costs in line, by boosting revenue generation, profit maximisation and ticket sales.