Gail Alexan­der

The cur­rent size of the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion's (PTSC) fleet of bus­es is 336, in­clud­ing un­ser­vice­able bus­es and cur­rent es­ti­mates are that PTSC re­quires ap­prox­i­mate­ly 450 to pro­vide ad­e­quate ser­vices in T&T.

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan gave the sta­tis­tics in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion queries. Sinanan said the cur­rent num­ber of bus­es is ex­clu­sive of un­ser­vice­able bus­es due for dis­pos­al. There are cur­rent­ly 27 bus­es that are deemed not road­wor­thy and are to un­der­go short term re­pairs.

The es­ti­mat­ed 450 fig­ure which is nec­es­sary is in­clu­sive of re­serves and main­te­nance of bus­es, he added. But he said this es­ti­mate is un­der reg­u­lar re­view based on sup­ply and de­mand.

Over 2014 to 2018 PTSC pur­chased 97 bus­es at a cost of $105.6 mil­lion, Sinanan said.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia who re­vealed that Gov­ern­ment is hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty at­tract­ing tech­ni­cal-vo­ca­tion­al teach­ers said teach­ing va­can­cies in pri­ma­ry schools cur­rent­ly num­ber 23 and 229 in sec­ondary schools. He said those in pri­ma­ry schools are all in de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert al­so re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion queries, said to date the on­ly mem­ber of the CL Fi­nan­cial Group that has re­paid monies to Gov­ern­ment is CLI­CO.

Up to Sep­tem­ber, CLI­CO had re­paid a to­tal of $14.986 bil­lion in­clud­ing $2.159 bil­lion in in­ter­est.