JUTC FUEL CROOKS

Employees of the cash-starved Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) are plundering the state-run entity’s supplies, siphoning off fuel by hatching elaborate schemes, Managing Director Paul Abrahams has charged.

The debt-strapped company has suffered chronic levels of pilferage of fuel since its inception – part of a wider web of fraud that has spanned fare collection and ticket irregularities.

But Abrahams’ disclosure at Wednesday’s sitting of the Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC) unveiled a more intricate, sinister plot of deception.

“We discovered the other day that what they do now is open the inspection plate and tie the float valve to make it look like it’s full. So when the bus is leaving the depot, the fuel gauge will register full, and then within an hour and a half, the bus is out of fuel,” the managing director told the committee members.

Abrahams said the management has had to go through all the buses and reseal them as well as develop a system where only select employees have access to the fuel-sending area.

“We have done a chart in which we have looked at certain buses that seem to replicate themselves shutting down, and what we do now is we are targeting those buses and are seeing a significant reduction in the number of buses that were running out of fuel prior,” Abrahams said.

He said that in late September, the police cracked a petrol-stealing ring in which four men, including a JUTC employee, were caught stealing fuel from one of the company’s buses in Kingston.

The state-owned bus company, which projected $8 billion in losses this financial year, requested $1 billion for fuel, but only $522 million was approved in the Supplementary Estimates.

JUTC Deputy Managing Director of Finance Marcia Hamilton said fuel costs have increased by 56 per cent year on year.

“Year to date since April, we have spent $1 billion on fuel, and the losses, which include whatever theft we find, work out to $6 million, or 0.6 per cent of the total spent, and there is an industry amount of 0.5 per cent for losses because we are dealing with liquid which can spill,” she explained.

However, permanent secretary in the transport ministry, Dr Alwin Hales, said since the request was made, there has been a slight downward trend in fuel prices.

“We are watching and monitoring, and if there needs to be an additional request, then we will have to do so,” he said.

The permanent secretary told the committee that he is awaiting word from the manufacturer about when a technical team will visit to inspect the 50 new buses that are to be added to the JUTC’s fleet.

Hales said he expects them to be shipped by January 2023 and become operational by March 2023.

Meanwhile, Abrahams said another major issue being faced by the JUTC is cycling.

“When you’re supposed to travel from Half-Way Tree to Spanish Town and return two or three times for the evening peak, if you look at the boulevard now, you’re lucky if you can cycle twice. The yellow buses are lined up on the boulevard because they cannot get to Spanish Town lay-by to offload and pick up,” Abrahams told lawmakers.

“If we had a direct bus lane, we could cycle Spanish Town to Half-Way Tree in 20 minutes,” he said, adding that the exclusive bus lane on the boulevard has been transformed into a standard third lane by other motorists.

Abrahams said it takes buses as much as an hour per cycle in peak evening traffic.

He said the JUTC has had to place additional buses in Half-Way Tree and downtown to transport commuters to Spanish Town without waiting for the return of a bus that had left earlier.

“When a unit takes off with a crowd, we just wait for a build-up and then we pull one of those buses out of the system to clear the crowd again,” Abrahams said.

He added that three containers of parts that were ordered in June arrived last Friday and will allow an additional 30 buses to become operational, increasing the units available in the fleet to 260.

“Comfortably, JUTC will need 385 buses that will be rolled out every day within an availability figure of probably 425 to 435 buses,” the managing director said.

judana.murphy@gleanerjm.com