On Sunday new bus routes will take effect in the northern zone. The implementation of those runs was delayed for years because of an injunction that National Transport had taken out against the Ministry of Transport.
But National has fallen into receivership and the injunction was lifted and finally the ministry of transport has gotten the go ahead to proceed with laying out new bus runs for the northern route.
Should have been a happy ending but turns out into a very bad start because bus lines throughout the north and the west are saying they got a raw deal.
Thomas Shaw is the president of the Belizean Bus Association and he told Monica Bodden that they need things to change before Sunday and that is why they are going into an emergency meeting with the Transport Minister tomorrow.
Thomas Shaw, President BBOC
"The concerns that the association has at this moment is due to the fact with the new comers coming into the industry and they had a meeting in Belmopan on Tuesday last week where they confronted us and they gave us some new schedules that should be implemented on the 22nd of May, which is this coming Sunday. The BBOC has been operating in the West and now they want the BBOC to go north. BBOC is a cooperative which is individually owned by 30-40 members and they are also part of the association and we have operators in the north as well like Chells, Tillet, Cabera's - they have actually lost their runs as well. Mr. Chell is from Orange Walk and basically he has lost all his runs into Belize City and being place on village from Orange Walk back to Carmelita. If you guys know that Mr. Chell is also a member of the association and as you guys can recall that Mr. Chell had been there for many years. The association thinks that it is unfair and I think that our main objective is that the Minister had promise us that wasn't going to be any new operators but instead of him fulfilling and living up to his promise - here we come with 13-14 new comers into the industry."
"We are getting legal advice and as the president - I told my members we are going to be civilize, no blocking of the roads and we are going to do things in a respectful manner and that's the reason why we are trying to dialogue with government to have a closer relation with them. Basically what we want is for them to respect the association, respect our commuters, respect our investment. Tomorrow Friday we will have a meeting with the Minister and base on the outcome of that meeting then we will decide what's going to be plan B."
The meeting starts at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning at the Belize Coastal Zone Management office.
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