Member of Parliament for South Catherine, Fitz Jackson, says the country’s productivity is being hampered by the inability of the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) to meet the demand of commuters.
Jackson was addressing the Finance Secretary at the Ministry of Finance, Darlene Morrison, during Wednesday’s sitting of Parliament’s Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC). He said passengers in his constituency are struggling to access transportation in the mornings.
“I get the complaints. It is miserable. It’s terrible!” he said. He noted that commuters in Portmore are not the only ones suffering.
Morrison told the PAAC that provisions have been made for additional buses, however, some policy decisions will have to be made in the near future relating to the JUTC. She noted that the government has been assisting the entity over the years as there have been some issues in making the bus company a “self-financing public body.”
Tova Hamilton, PAAC member, inquired what was being done to ensure that the JUTC and other state entities, like the National Water Commission, (NWC) were being assisted to “get out of the red”. Morrison assured that the Ministry of Finance is working with the JUTC to ensure that the company is meeting its priority objectives.
“We would be looking at them now [and] we would be doing an assessment going into the first supplementary budget in terms of what may be necessary,” she said.
It was reported earlier this year that the JUTC was expected to be bailed out by taxpayers to the tune of $5.3 billion for the 2021-22 fiscal year. An estimated loss of nearly $11 billion was being projected before the government grant was taken into consideration.
Jackson insisted that the situation at the JUTC could not be studied indefinitely because, “The JUTC situation is nothing new; it has been bad for a while and is getting worse.”
“In terms of production, the JUTC is a catalyst in all of this, not to mention the social misery factor that is imposed on commuters because of what they are subjected to out there,” he said.
PAAC chair, Mikael Phillips, was a bit more sympathetic and cautioned against blaming the technocrats and the staff at the JUTC for the company’s financial woes. He feels policy-makers are to shoulder some of the blame.
“If you give them (JUTC) basket to carry water, then that’s all they can carry,” he said.
Hamilton countered this view and insisted that improper management of the organisation should not be overlooked as this affects the company’s bottom line.
