THE Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) has suffered almost five times the amount of losses it projected since the start of the new financial year, according to its most up-to-date financials that were discussed at Wednesday’s sitting of the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) of parliament.

The figures show that the company has suffered year-to-date losses of $671.4 million, some $554 million more than was projected. But managing director of the State-run bus company, Colin Campbell, said the company’s operational losses “are not worsening… they are improving”.

Although the JUTC has achieved $2.4 billion of the $2.8 billion in revenue, which it budgeted for up to the end of September, its gross operating expenses for the period stood at $3.78 billion.

He attributed most of the bleeding to illegal taxis and those running contrary to their road licences, a long-standing situation which has wreaked havoc on the bus company’s profits. The managing director said gross operating revenues were impacted, particularly during the first quarter of the year.

“Since July, we have offered a summer fare special to commuters because the official fare in the KMTR (Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region) of $120 was being undercut by a lot of the illegal and legal (taxi) operators… we were losing about 30 to 40,000 passengers per day. The second reason is that some of the government inflows that we had expected during the first three months of the year did not materialise,” he explained. This would have been some 12.5 to 16 per cent of the 240,000 passengers that the JUTC carries on average per day.

He said the company also sustains daily losses from vandalism and other damage to units from objects thrown onto windscreens, which cost an average of $500,000 to replace.

At the same time Campbell pointed to the 45 per cent of the company’s fares or 115,000 passengers that are concessionary. “What it means is that JUTC writes a cheque for these categories every day for the difference between [the full fare and the concessionary fare],” he noted. Added to that, he said, is the fact that the JUTC is only recovering 70 per cent of its operational costs from fares.

But the managing director argued that this fare level is better than what obtains worldwide. “This is one of the highest in any jurisdiction in the world. Most public transit systems recover less than 50 per cent (from fares),” he pointed out.

Still Campbell said, “If we were able to get a full fare from all 240,000 persons, we would be able to generate all the money to pay for our operational costs, but the fact is that most persons cannot afford to pay that. So the whole business of social intervention through the transport system has to be looked at.”

PAAC Chairman Edmund Bartlett commented that the situation was untenable and that, “if the JUTC is to be anything other than an albatross, there has to be some aggression in terms of revenue”.