Yvonne Ba­boolal

A $2 mil­lion con­tract has been award­ed by the Trans­port Min­istry to se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny Pe­ga­sus Lim­it­ed to set up a Glob­al Po­si­tion­ing Sys­tem (GPS) for the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC). The sys­tem would help track and lo­cate bus­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing peak hours, which may be de­layed by traf­fic or ac­ci­dents.

Pe­ga­sus has been in the se­cu­ri­ty in­dus­try for 12 years and in the GPS track­ing/fleet man­age­ment busi­ness be­tween five to eight years, the com­pa­ny's chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Gary Kalliecha­ran said. The PTSC GPS project was launched at the City Gate Hub, South Quay, Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

Trans­port Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj, dur­ing an ad­dress, said there's not a sin­gle pub­lic or­gan­i­sa­tion in T&T with a GPS sys­tem in place. Ma­haraj said the GPS con­cept for PTSC was de­vel­oped two years ago when he was chair­man of the board. "But there was no need to know where the bus­es were then. We know where they were. They were in the garage, bro­ken down."

He said those same bro­ken down bus­es were now out on the road and the num­ber had in­creased from sev­en when the Gov­ern­ment came in­to of­fice to 21 now. "Be­fore next week, we will have close to 30 bus­es on the road," Ma­haraj said. Ma­haraj said the GPS sys­tem would be in­stalled on a phased ba­sis, start­ing with the Deluxe coach­es.

"Staff will no longer have to de­pend on a man­u­al re­port­ing sys­tem to lo­cate bus­es. The sys­tem will as­sist man­agers and plan­ners," he said. PTSC as­sis­tant ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er of IT Rishi Ram­lo­gan, said it was base­line GPS tech­nol­o­gy which was be­ing put in place. He said it was on­ly the be­gin­ning.

In­clud­ed in the com­ing pack­age of high­er tech­nol­o­gy are dig­i­tal dis­plays of sched­ules and routes, he said. Kalliecha­ran said the use of tech­nol­o­gy was at the core of the dri­ve to trans­form PTSC. He said Pe­ga­sus has formed an al­liance with Track­ing Sys­tems Corp of the Unit­ed States and has de­vel­oped a sys­tem unique to T&T. In­stal­la­tion start­ed four days ago on the Deluxe fleet.