JUTC boss says there will be no job cuts
Published:Thursday | June 2, 2022 | 12:06 AMAsha Wilks/Gleaner Writer
Despite the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) remaining overstaffed in established job positions, Paul Abrahams, managing director at JUTC, says the surplus was essential to maintaining the operations of the state-run organisation.
Speaking with The Gleaner on the margins of Tuesday’s signing of a contract for 50 new buses to be added to the 250-unit fleet, Abrahams said that staffing concerns dated back to 2006. The bus company has 1,680 posts in its establishment.
Currently, the staff component stands at 1,760 individuals. Abrahams argues that a range of 1,750 to 1,825 employees are required for optimal service delivery.
“As you increase bus operation, you increase drivers [and] expenditure,” he said.
2020 audit
JUTC was cited for having unapproved personnel capacity that cost an average of $1.115 billion in a 2020 Auditor General’s Department performance report that covered the period 2014 to 2019. As at July 2020, the staff numbers had decreased from 2,252 in 2016 to 1,956.
The report sparked some controversy, with JUTC administrators requesting retractions for contested claims in the report.
Auditor General Pamela Monroe Ellis, however, stood by her report, claiming that the JUTC had been given enough time to evaluate the draft document.
Abrahams told The Gleaner that there would be no job cuts.
Despite the fact that the 2020 report stated that the JUTC exceeded its overtime budget by $728 million in a year, Abrahams asserted that the company’s expenditure is currently under control.
He said that while he could not provide a specific figure for the company’s current position, when he checked the records recently, he found that the JUTC had a 59 per cent positive adherence to the budget, which has a $170-million cap.
“So we have managed the overtime expenditure very carefully as one of our efficiency moves because our fare box remains the same within uneconomic fare,” said the managing director.
“We are challenged with the taxis out there for ridership, so the board of directors has instructed that we look within, take up every possible cost that we can to ensure that we keep the company extremely tight, which is what we are doing.”
The board of JUTC had announced in 2020 that it would sanction all individuals hired without requisite qualifications and had issued a deadline of September 2020 for those who had not enrolled in a recognised tertiary institution.
But this deadline had not resulted in any staff cuts, Abrahams disclosed.
“I don’t think it’s a matter of sanctions. What we have done is we have told persons you need to further your education, so we know that the number of persons have began to further their education [and] been allowed that time to do it ... . We assist them as best as we can,” he said.
The JUTC has been a perennial drain on the Government’s coffers, with projections of an $8-billion loss for the 2022-2023 financial year.
Since the resumption of full face-to-face instruction in schools, the JUTC has not recorded any significant bump in profitability and ridership, as students are concessionary passengers, he said.
Cost-saving measures
Abrahams said that cost-saving measures have been implemented because of supply-chain challenges that have slowed the shipment of auto parts.
“We order parts today and we don’t get them for four months ... so that is really what’s tying the hands of the JUTC severely right now,” he said.
With units as old as 12 years, Abrahams explained that the company’s ageing fleet would continue to struggle.
Abrahams is hopeful that the current fleet will be increased to 400, easing pressure on the overworked units.
He revealed that he is in dialogue with the transport ministry for bulk parts purchases to cover the company’s servicing needs for up to four months.
With the addition of 50 buses by September, Abrahams is looking to transition the older buses into peak-hour operations.