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Despite an assurance from Education Minister Anthony Garcia that salaries of school bus drivers are being processed, president of the Maxi Taxi Concessionaires Association Rodney Ramlogan says they are sceptical of the promise.
Responding to a statement from Garcia that invoices for payments for January 2018 were only received from the Public Transport Service Corporation last week Friday, Ramlogan said he found it strange that PTSC submitted their invoices in April.
“Normally we do invoices on a fortnightly basis and submit them to the PTSC. We did this since January. We have worked every fortnight for this year. It would have taken at least a month for the first payment to come in but we are entering the fifth month of the year and we have not one cent,” Ramlogan said.
He noted that under Garcia’s tenure it was the first time in 28 years that drivers were facing hardship to get their salaries.
“This is what we worked for. It is owed to us. Garcia and the ministry is saying that we are a valuable service but they are not treating us as if we are valuable,” Ramlogan said.
He also said that Garcia has accused the service of having “ghost buses.”
“There has never been any evidence of this. Last term Garcia said only 12,000 children were being transported to schools but after an investigation was done, they realised that we were responsible for transporting over 30,000 students. The ministry needs to get its act together. We need to support our families. We cannot continue to work in this manner,” Ramlogan said.
He warned that if they are not paid, the service will be shut down after the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA) examination is completed next week Thursday.
Garcia, in a statement, said he had put measures in place to verify all invoices for payments to maxi taxi operators who are contracted by the PTSC to transport school children. He said concerns had been raised about the need to carefully review and analyse all requests for payments, in order to ensure quality service and value for money.
He noted that the review exercise conducted by the ministry had resulted in the reimbursement of approximately $ 1.7 million to the ministry.