MONTEGO BAY, St James — A former chairman of Montego Bay Metro Company based in St James is urging the Government not to lean towards privatising the entity.

Robin Russell, who served as chairman at the Bogue-based entity between 2016 and 2019, told the
Jamaica Observer that given the importance of the service provided by the entity to individuals in several communities in the western end of the island, it needs to remain in hands of the Government.

“If it is privatised then they are going to have to pay for the service. Unfortunately, public transportation is not necessarily a money-making venture especially [with discounted] services [for the] elderly and children, but it’s a service that has to happen, you have to have it,” he said.

His comments comes on the heels of a recent comment made by Minister of Science, Energy, Telecommunications and Transport Daryl Vaz, who said that a private partnership could be considered for the future of the entity.

But Russell is calling for the Government to take an egalitarian approach in dealing with the affairs of that entity in comparison to its Kingston-based counterpart, the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC).

“Metro needs the level of investment that JUTC is getting. There is a need for it and if Metro does their job effectively, then you won’t have that loss,” he told the Observer
.

Currently, there are only five buses being used to service five routes into Falmouth, Lucea, Goodwill, Cambridge, and Mackfield in Westmoreland.

Russell explained that the since its inception in 1997, the Montego Bay Metro has served an important subset of individuals who rely on its services on a daily basis.

“For years, Metro has been running on old buses but there is a need, there is a critical need, even if just to create that service for kids and elderly people,” he stated.

“It’s the responsibility of the Government to ensure that those people are safe and have the service,” he continued.

He sought to emphasise the importance of the service to the students who travel to school each day.

“As a former chairman of the Montego Bay Metro, one of the key roles of the Metro service and why it was founded was that it transports a lot of schoolchildren,” he said.

“You at least know that your children are safe from school to the town centre or the closest point. Without that service, what happens to all those kids that goes to Knockalva, Rusea’s, William Knibb, Spot Valley?”

He also said there is potential growth for the service in tourism.

“There is no reason that if you have a proper bus service that people wouldn’t jump on a bus coming from say Iberostar into the town,” said Russell, who also heads the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association.

“Not everybody can afford a JUTA bus, so people will jump on a public bus as a normal mode of transportation.”