Administrators of minibus routes in Chisinau addressed an open letter to the Municipality, demanding the decision of increasing transportation fees to be adopted sooner, because of the rise in prices of fuel. Otherwise, minibus drivers won’t be able to continue their jobs, and the transportation of passengers will be disturbed. On the other hand, the directors of the Urban Bus Company and of the Chisinau Electric Transport Utility say they could deploy more transport units if needed, Info-Prim Neo reports. According to the head of the Association of Private Transporters Ion Mamaliga, after the prices of diesel fuel rose, drivers only gather enough money for fuel. Thus, many refuse to work and others leave abroad. The situation was aggravated by the inspections of the traffic police and the state fiscal inspectors. The applied fines vary between 2000 and 25,000 lei. “In this situation, it’s simply impossible to work. Now, we’re working according to summer regime, when the passenger flow is reduced and on some routes only half or a third of the needed transport units are deployed. Even so, with the currently working transport units, after September 1 it will be impossible to transport all the passengers. That’s why I asked to solve the fee issue. Otherwise, on September we’ll have to stop the circulation of minibuses. We, the administrators, convened to fire any driver that ignores the red traffic light”, declared Ion Mamaliga. Director of the Urban Bus Company Iacob Capcelea said that if the number of minibuses would be insufficient, more buses would be deployed so that the transportation of passengers was disturbed. “At the moment, 79 buses transport passengers on city routes. On September 1, we’ll return to the spring number, when 93 buses ran in Chisinau. If needed, we’ll deploy 10-12 more buses. If even this number isn’t enough, we’ll use other companies that own buses”, declared Iacob Capcelea. Head of the Chisinau Electric Transport Utility Gheorghe Morgoci thinks that in case of necessity, 20 more trolleybuses could be deployed on routes, raising their number to 262. “We hope this will be enough, because currently the public transport units are loaded only 40% of their capacity”, said Morgoci. Administrators of municipal minibus routes demand the transportation fees to be increased from 3 to 5 lei.