Former Chairman of the Transport Board, attorney-at-law Anthony Wiltshire, says that during his tenure as Chairman, the Transport Board was in dire financial straits, finding it hard to make ends meet.
Wiltshire’s comments came as he made another appearance before the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament. During the hearing held on Monday evening, the former chairman described his time at the Transport Board as “difficult”. Responding to questions from Minister of Labour and Social Partnership Relations, Colin Jordan, Wiltshire went further, indicating that the Board was “always in the red”.
“So we had to use the little common sense we had to chart the rough waters and at the end of the day we would see what little money we had, to use it to the best of our ability because we were deep in the red,” he stated.
He continued, “We had to wait long on Government to provide subventions, so when subventions came in, they were mainly used to pay off the creditors. So we didn’t have much at our disposal. In fact, in some instances, the Transport Board didn’t even have money to buy printer ink and paper – that is how bad it was.”
Special Project to repair buses
Wiltshire told the PAC that in some instances, creditors stopped offering credit to the Board. One example, he said, was Simpson Motors, which had been owed millions by the state-owned entity. With that in mind, he said that the Special Project to repair buses was started in an effort to stop the haemorrhaging at the Transport Board.
“We were spending thousands of dollars in respect of transmission repairs, and we brought in the consultant and he started doing things which saved the corporation. I think at the end of his report, it was about four point something million dollars in savings, because he was repairing starters. A starter at the time was about $2,600 and he brought in a growler and he trained some youngster to repair starters and it cost only $200 to get the brushes and that kind of thing. In the past, if a bus had a problem with a starter, they would take it off, put it in the yard and get a new one – so that was a substantial savings there,” the former chairman stated.
Duties, shipping costs not accounted for
Wiltshire said that the consultant was also able to source and bring parts into the island at costs less than what they were available for in Barbados.
“I remember we went down to Brazil and we had parts cut, in some cases, by more than half. Then we set up an emergency fund in case if a bus had broken down and you needed parts urgently, you could send off an e-mail and you could get up to US$10,000 in parts, so long as they were able to be sent by FedEx. When you compared it to the local provider that was substantial savings,” he indicated.
But, during her questioning, Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Trade, Sandra Husbands, noted that duties and shipping costs were not accounted for in the data. To that end, she asked how could the cost of locally available parts, which included the cost of duties and shipping, be fairly compared to the cost of parts from overseas, where duties and shipping costs had not yet be applied.
“...In good management practice, you would have to compare apples with apples and in order to see what are the potential savings, you would have needed to have your shipping costs or any other costs associated with the imported product, so you could make a clear judgement as to the degree of savings. I’m sure there were savings, but the degree would have been overstated if you haven’t included the cost of shipping to bring in the item. That is my concern with the data, because the data was startling,” Husbands said. (JRT)
