MP Dumitru Alaiba, chair of the Economy Committee, is strongly against the Chisinau municipality’s plans to raise public transport fares and suggests that the government won’t offer funds to subsidies the municipal public transport companies.
Alaiba in particular criticized Mayor Ion Ceban, saying that the municipality’s inability to manage public transport costs is due to Ceban’s “incompetence” to carry out internal reforms.
“(Ion Ceban) is incompetent and unable to finish a job. It’s very easy to just increase the fares. It’s easy to say that the (trolleybus company) RTEC incurs losses and the rates must be increased. But maybe you should talk about the need for reform at the RTEC first? He only talks about price increases and asks for money from the state budget. Is this the only thing a mayor is supposed to do? If so, anyone could be mayor. He must first reform, optimize, find out what (illegal) schemes might be there, or admit he is a bad manager. I understand that it’s easy to whitewash the curbs, that is the only thing he seems to good at. There are things that are harder to accomplish than paving roads or planting bushes. That’s what Shor did in Orhei and now Ceban imports this model in Chisinau”, Dumitru Alaiba stated during the talk show “Rezoomat with Ileana Pîrgaru” on RliveTV.
Two days ago, the Chisinau City Hall sent a request to the Government and the Parliament announcing that it could maintain the current public transport rates if the government offered 350 million in subsidies to the municipal trolleybus and bus companies.
“The state budget is not a bottomless pot of money. First of all, (Ion Ceban) should look for internal reserves, optimize, carry out at least one reform as mayor. I am sorry that the citizens were lied to in 2019, but soon we will have the chance to fix this mistake”, added Alaiba.
The Mayor’s Office proposed a single bus and trolleybus fare of 6 lei for both urban and suburban travel, which would be a tripling from the current 2 lei for a trolleybus ride and a doubling from 3 lei for a bus ride. Last time Chisinau public transport fares were reviewed in 2009.
