Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Spînu, Minister of Infrastructure and Regional Development, said that he will have a meeting with carriers on March 23 to discuss solutions for improving passenger transport services and renewing the buses and minibuses. The official noted the Government will consider possibilities of supporting the carriers, including by a program called “Jalopy”, similar to that implemented in Romania, but the fares for passengers cannot be raised, IPN reports.
Andrei Spînu said he accepts a dialogue with carriers so that the passengers benefit from safe and high-quality transport services. The carriers’ request to double the tariff is unjustified as the prices of gasoline and diesel fuel have declined in the recent past.
“The calculations we did show that the rise in tariffs is not justified. It’s true that the fuel prices started to rise in September, but during the past two weeks they have declined and, if we look at the oil prices on international markets, we see that a new decline is expected. We will probably reach the August prices soon. We cannot raise the tariffs inly because the prices grew during two months. There were days when the price of diesel fuel declined, but the tariffs remained the same,” Andrei Spînu stated in the talk show “Prime Time” on PrimeTV channel.
The minister said the fares for passengers are calculated according to a methodology that has been applied during many years. If the carriers do not invest in modernizing the units of transport so as not to endanger the lives of passengers, the rise in fares is out of the question.
“The value of the unit of transport is indicated in the methodology. Some of the carriers said the bus or minibus costs 500,000 lei, which is €25,000. Our analysis shows that 78% of the units of transport are over 16 years old and 48% of the vehicles carrying passengers are over 20 years old. You can see on any website that the minibuses aged 20 years cost less than 200,000 lei. They tell me we should include the wear degree in the tariffs, but we cannot do this. Something like this was done until now, but the units of transport weren’t replaced,” said Andrei Spînu.
The carriers mounted a number of protests in central Chisinau, asking to increase the fares for passengers. The tariff for transporting passengers is now 0.60-0.70 lei/km and the carriers demand to raise it to 1.20 lei/km.
