JAMAICA Urban Transit Company (JUTC) Managing Director Colin Campbell last week pointed to cases of abuse and fraud at the State-owned bus company and insisted that its plan to discontinue bus transfers will go ahead today as one of several changes needed to boost the cash-strapped company’s revenues.

“What we are doing is, we are merely trying to tighten up the system,” Campbell told members of the Rotary Club of St Andrew North at their weekly meeting last Monday, as he appealed for public support for changes that are bound to attract opposition from equally cash-strapped commuters but which, he is convinced, are inevitable to reverse the company’s fortunes.

Campbell admitted that his problems are not only with commuters, some of whom he claims are abusing the transfer system, costing the company some $500,000 per day, but also some employees of the company who have been abusing what seems to be an inadequately supervised system.

“Before going to the JUTC, I thought that every single bus that drove past me on the road was on legitimate JUTC business. I didn’t know that persons could take a bus and run a route for themselves without permission. But it happens,” Campbell told the meeting.

“They (bus crews) conspire with the mechanics to say that a bus is needed, to replace a sick bus on the road. Then they conspire to book off, claiming that they are not feeling well, and one person takes the bus and goes and runs a route, in total breach of all company policies,” he said.

“We have drivers who are assigned to staff driving duties. They are sent to pick up the staff and take them to work and, on the way, they pick up passengers and collect the fares for themselves,” he added.

Recently, the JUTC was forced to call in the police fraud squad to investigate cases of bus crews using bogus and used tickets and issuing concession tickets to passengers paying full fares, as well as larceny of the company’s cash.

“Everything you can think of happens at the JUTC,” Campbell admitted, as he confessed to a serious internal problem which, he admitted, is one of the factors influencing the switch from commuters paying their fares in cash to a cashless system using the new Smarter Card.

Campbell told the Jamaica Observer after the meeting that the current Heads of Agreement between the management of the JUTC and the University and Allied Workers Union, which represents the company’s hourly paid staff, has expired and he will be seeking changes in negotiating a new agreement with the union.

“I say this while emphasising that we have good workers. We have 1,725 employees and the vast majority are excellent workers who go to work, work hard and deliver a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. But there are some persons, maybe they have been getting away with it for years, and it has become part of the culture,” he stated.

“But, we have to stamp this out, because the JUTC will have to become a company that is known for, apart from its service, its integrity of system and for its delivery on a mandate of a quality transport system for the Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region,” he argued.

“We are going to remove all cash transactions from the JUTC, and replace it with a card that is specific to the person. So, if you are entitled to a concession ride, you will get a concession card, and if you are an adult and you go on board, same thing,” he explained.

He said that he expected rumblings when he introduces measures to improve the system, including cutting out the bus transfers at the Half-Way-Tree Transport Centre, which is scheduled to start today.

The move has attracted the attention of both JUTC customers and non-users of the public buses, who believe that it is an informal increase in bus fares, as the commuters who benefited from transfers from selected buses to the normal buses taking them to their destinations will now have to pay a second fare.

“There will be alternative routes for 99 per cent of these commuters, but there will be cases where persons using the shuttles will have to pay again. But you have to look at the greater good,” he said.

In the meantime, Opposition Leader Andrew Holness has described the move as “unconscionable”, a suggestion which seems to have strong public support.

“No such increase should take place without consultation,” Holness said, describing the removal of the transfer system as an underhanded effort by the JUTC to raise fares without going through the proper channels.

But Campbell is insisting on the transfer, as well as a number of other changes he wants implemented by the end of the current financial year.

He has come under fire from commuters and private and public road users for recently introducing a designated lane for the buses using the Mandela Highway between Kingston and Spanish Town.

He has also been lambasted by private operators on JUTC sub-franchised routes for giving them notice that some 394 sub-franchises are endangered, as the company adds new buses to its fleet and seeks to recapture routes it had been previously unable to service properly.

“I don’t think we need so many. In fact, the number of sub-franchise holders is fast heading back to when we had the one man, one bus system,” Campbell told the Sunday Observer, last week.

But president of the Jamaica Association of Transport Owners and Operators, Louis Barton, says that revamping the sub-franchised routes by next March would destroy private operators who have invested millions of dollars in the public transportation system.

“It is unfair to give people who have invested so much in the sector four months’ notice to withdraw a licence which lasts for one year,” Barton told the Sunday Observer.

However, despite the growing discontent, Campbell, a former general secretary of the ruling People’s National Party and Cabinet minister, who also had a stint as a junior minister in transport in the 1990s, insisted that he is doing what is necessary to save the company.

He said that while the JUTC is currently turning out some 350 buses daily, he intends to improve that to 400 per day by January.

In addition to the sub-franchises which were encouraged by the Government because of the company’s inability to properly service its 70 regular routes, there are thousands of illegal operators whom he wants removed through enforcement.

One of the new developments at the JUTC is that much-feared former Senior Superintendent of Police Radcliffe Lewis, who retired from the constabulary at the end of October, has now joined the bus company as head of its Franchise Protection Department.

Campbell admitted that the recent 25 per cent bus fare increase is inadequate to meet expenses, and wants an immediate increase in Government subvention to more than $2 billion per year from the Ministry of Finance, to cover the cost of maintaining a daily service of at least 350 buses until March 2014.