THE Government announced yesterday that it will appeal the $12.5 award by an arbitration panel to the National Transport Co-operative Society.

The award was handed down on the grounds that the Government breached a contractual undertaking to raise bus fares to levels that would have given the NTCS a 15 per cent return on investment when the Ezroy Millwood-led organisation operated Kingston’s bus service between 1995 and 2001.

Robert Pickersgill, the transport minister, said that government lawyers had briefed a standing Cabinet committed on the findings of the arbitrators — former judges Boyd Carey and Ira Rowe and lawyer Angela Hudson-Phillips — and other “pertinent issues”.

“The Government’s legal team will be pursuing a judicial review on the basis that yesterday’s (Thursday) ruling by the arbitration tribunal was impacted by a number of errors in law,” Pickersgill said.

Earlier, Patrick Bailey, one of the NTCS’ lawyers, had suggested that an appeal by the Government would be little more than a means for buying time.

“Unless there is a substantial and gross error in applying the law, there will be no merit to any appeal,” Bailey told the Observer. “It was a very distinguished panel comprising two former appeals court judges and a queen’s counsel. So unless there was some point of law that they over-looked, it is not likely that there will be any merit to an appeal.”

Specifically, the tribunal awarded $4.5 billion for lost income. But when compounded interest, pegged at the Treasury Bill rates, are taken into account, the Government’s pay-out at this point would be over $12.5 billion.

If it stands, that money will go to 335 owners, who at the time controlled about 14,000 buses in the capital.

This matter grew out of the Government’s attempt at the end of the 1990s to replace the capital’s disorganised, dirty and over-crowded bus system with what is now the state-owned Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC). That required taking back routes from concessionaires, including Millwood’s organisation.

Initially the NTCS sued the government for $6.8 billion for loss of earnings for the first half of the contract period, arguing that it could not have developed the bus service because the Government did not meet its obligation to implement a fare table that would have provided the agreed return. The upshot: no surplus to invest.

Both sides had agreed to end the court case and take the matter to arbitration as part of the agreement for the Government’s buy-back of the last five years of the franchise agreement.

Ironically, the NTCS asked for $7 billion but settled for $337 million, plus an agreement to purchase up to 350 buses from individual owners. The price tag on those buses was well under $200 million.

Before the Government’s announcement of its intention to appeal, NTCS officials had said that they were ready to negotiate a payment regime.

“The NTCS is prepared to negotiate reasonable conditions of payment,” Millwood told reporters. ” …over a period of time we will collect the money with interest.”

Millwood had also said that his organisation would like to share some of its windfall with charity.

“I don’t know who yet, but we are going to be reaching out to some needy group,” he said. “We will be doing everything possible to educate our people that the law is alive and the law has no prejudice whether you are white or black or blue. The process of law, when fully executed, will give you your just reward.”

Millwood’s group had argued that the move to change the franchise system was to push out “small man” operators in favour of big players.

He echoed that broad theme yesterday, claiming that the Government had ignored contract and trampled on the rights of ordinary Jamaicans.

Said Millwood: “When we have a Cabinet which is the first one in Jamaica – and perhaps in the Caribbean – with so many learned lawyers, Queen’s counsels, and they treat the law in this manner, it is a retrograde step for black people.”