The PAS councilors consider not all the pensioners should travel free by public transport in the municipality of Chisinau, as their opponents in the Municipal Council propose. Those with large pensions should be excluded, Roman Cojuhari, the head of the group of the Party of Action and Solidarity on the CMC, stated in a public debate entitled “Public transport fares in the capital city: between necessity, equity and interests, including political ones” that was hosted by IPN.
However, given that the proposal to exempt all the pensioners from paying the fare was formulated by the executive, which is to implement the decision, the PAS councilors promoted the idea that there is place for more equity and avoided harsher objections to their opponents’ ‘generosity’.
The councilor said there are persons whose pensions were raised by 30%, but these anyway remained at 2,000-3,000 lei a month. But there are persons who get pensions of 6,000 lei, 7,000 lei and over. “What about equity in the case of socially deprived families and other sections whose incomes are lower than the incomes of these pensioners,” Roman Cojuhari asked rhetorically.
Given that the bus and trolleybus fare in the municipality is expected to be raised to 6 lei, the speaker referred to the discounts enjoyed based on the system of season tickets. “Our colleagues from the executive should extensively and more convincingly inform the public about the advantages of season tickets and how and where these could be bought. Surely, the young people will opt for electronic ticketing... But the goal of the executive is to promote, popularize season tickets,” stated the councilor.
It is not yet known how the revenues from the sale of season tickets will be distributed. So far, the season tickets for buses and trolleybuses were sold separately, but now there will be a common season ticket. The usage of each type of transport should be determined.
Speaking about the problems persisting in the activity of the two transport companies, Roman Cojuhari reminded that the purchase of the over 100 new buses should have led to lower costs, to optimization of processes, but the cost of a covered km is increased for the second time in the absence of transparency and concrete figures. Information about the financial situation cannot be obtained from the two companies. “If we look at the figures, we see that the subsidies allocated by the Council are higher than the costs of tickets sold by the Electric Transport Company,” he stated.
Form the councilor’s statements, it could be deduced that the carriers didn’t furnish the Council even with the assessment of the impact expected as a result of the implementation of the new methodology for calculating urban transport fares.
