The Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) on Saturday officially launched its new Golden Dragon buses, 35 of which were recently introduced to the bus company’s fleet.

In a ceremony at the company’s Lyndhurst Road complex in Kingston, Transport and Mining Minister Mike Henry led a chorus in support of the very compact 39-seater Chinese-made units.

Henry said the Golden Dragon buses were a well-needed addition to the company’s recently depleted fleet and represented continuity in governance, as the idea for their acquisition had been raised from his first time as transport minister, and the People’s National Party in Government had carried through with the idea, which allowed for the recent acquisition of the new buses under a new Jamaica Labour Party Administration.

However, he rapped the management of the bus company up to May of this year for having failed to acquire new buses after the 230 that were left on order by the JLP Administration in 2012, and compounding the situation with what he described as a “dismal failure” to secure an adequate and timely flow of spare parts to properly maintain the fleet, resulting in a residual fall in the daily bus run-out numbers.

“…three years on, and the effects of very poor forward-planning and gross mismanagement landed the new management of the company with a major bus run-out challenge, because for quite some time, no more new buses where acquired for the service, and, as if adding insult to injury, the flow of critical spare parts to service the fleet was allowed to dry up,” said Henry.

“As a result, from January of this year, the run-out levels have dwindled,” he added, noting that “it has become the job of the new management and the new Administration to seek to reverse the situation, which is a goal that is now being actively pursued.”

He said that after major challenges during the less demanding summer holiday months, the present management was able to swing things around and put out enough buses to largely meet the basic expectations of commuters since the school year began in September.

The Golden Dragon buses, he added brought variety and flexibility to the JUTC fleet, with the much smaller and more compact units being directed mainly to service the hilly upper St Andrew routes, where the traditional JUTC buses have largely been challenged by the demanding terrain.

JUTC Chairman Gregory Mair cited the ‘big deal’ which the commuting public across the Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region (KMTR) enjoy, with the very low-priced JUTC service at first-world standards on offer through Government subsidy and the best possible efforts of the bus company.

“Only the public transportation systems in the developed world are on par [with] or ahead of what the JUTC offers to its commuters daily. And very few, if any of these systems, provide services at costs as low as the fares that are charged by the JUTC,” Mair said.

“There can be no doubt, also, that within the context of the Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region, the JUTC offers the safest and most secure option for public transportation,” he added.

“Overall, the JUTC is attuned to customers’ needs and has responded favourably to calls from the market, and has increased passenger satisfaction as a result,” Mair said.

The JUTC’s Managing Director Paul Abrahams thanked the company’s workforce for delivering well under sometimes very demanding and stressful situations.

He said the narrower and shorter Golden Dragon buses, which come with some more advanced technological applications than the other buses in the fleet, will help to ease the conditions under which some of the company’s operations are conducted, especially in upper St Andrew and the wider Corporate Area.