Qassata ohra (sorry, it would be lost in translation)
Transport Minister Joe Mizzi has offered the company which bought the bendy buses a 25% discount if it scraps them – an offer madeafter the deal was concluded and in violation of the terms which stated that the buses have to be exported within four weeks.
Transport companies are now fuming because of the violation.
There’s something else we should be looking at: the sheer, enormous waste of scrapping all those perfectly functional and almost-new buses which can still see service for many years to come.
Isn’t this government supposed to have contemporary values, which include environmental concerns like not doing things like this which involve gross waste? What a shame. Read Times of Malta’s report of this morning (link below).
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140514/local/firms-fury-as-bendy-buses-deal-violated.518906
A qassata/froga a day.
This government’s incompetence beggars belief.
‘A froga a day will keep intelligent voters away’
We can’t expect anything better from Joe Mizzi. He should have been dismissed in the last Cabinet reshuffle.
They can’t, he will not tell us where the crude oil is!!
I wonder who is behind the company that acquired the buses.
Let’s postulate –
company has a potential buyer for these buses in, say, an African state;
company gets a sweet deal from government to acquire said buses and flip them for a very nice ROI;
company gets stuck with bendy buses after African deal falls through;
‘business friendly’ government sweetens original agreement to bail out company from a ‘messy’ situation.
Just a stupid question, but…. can’t they be cut short and closed off down the middle to give us perfectly working normal sized buses?
The slice and dice whole cruise liners, why not a bus?
I am no engineer, but most probably the conversion would mean that the re-engineering would cost more than building one from scratch, or if not, it would be so close as to be unfeasible.
In any case, you will never get two small working buses.
Perhaps it may not have occurred to you that a bendy-bus has only one engine.
How would you move the second half? Oh yes you could tow it by the first one.
Excuse my sarcasm but I’m in that kind of mood today.
And who gets to certify the work?
Ok, so bodywork is modular, and this type has an axle right in front of the articulation, still, the result would have to be tested for dynamics, stability and handling.
Then there’s the minor detail that the rear section’s carrying capacity would still be missing.
The problem here is insisting these have no use.
Since the engine is in the rear half you would get a 4 wheeled ‘normal’ bus which commuters could take turns to push around. If the rear, powered bit could be made to balance segway-style on 2 wheels it would make a cool form of transport in itself and would definitely catapult Malta to worldwide attention.
The transport minister should do a survey now, whether the people want them back. Those small buses (red or white) are hell for people with any disability or old age. Most of them literally have difficulty to board the bus, have difficulty to sit comfortably, some of them needing two seats. Then they them have difficulty to get off the bus and to top it up, they have to open (slide) the bus door, which is heavy for them, and then to try to close it by slamming it when getting off, otherwise it doesn’t close. To add insult to injury, there are occasions when the driver, stops half-way, telling his passengers to get off, so that they change the bus. And everybody is happy now?
“And everybody is happy now?”
Since the rate of complaints has gone down, one would assume so. As long as it’s not the Nasty Nats’ Arriva, everything’s fine.
Unless, of course, it’s the expectations which have gone down.
All buses I see when in the Cottonera area are the yellow ones.
Yet another case of bad business practices. Or should I dare say corrupt business practices? Either way, Joe Mizzi is showing himself to be at his very best, inept.
But what else could we expect from a minister with no credentials or professional track record?
Such a waste. One of the main reasons why the use of he bendy buses was considered a blunder is because they were not used properly.
They’re not supposed to be driven down narrow Sliema roads.
However, they’re perfectly suited to being driven down higher capacity roads like the bypasses. Using two buses where one bendy bus would suffice is environmental and economic inefficiency.
Have you tried to scrap a car recently? Well it seems you only have two choices where to scrap it: Roc-a-Go or ta’ Robba.
Besides the fact that you have to pay for your own towing, and get nothing for the metal value of your car, if anything is missing (well it is a scrap car after all) they will not accept it and you will have to pay them the value of your missing Or badly damaged parts which is determined by the scrap yard.
If not, Transport Malta will issue a fine of 10 euro a month. These yards are also have the cheek to sell you parts from the car you have just had to give them for free at extortionate prices (higher than new, if found).
My point is that these well known Labour businessmen have been given a monopoly by the government over all the cars registered in Malta at their end of life.
Many small part retailers (who used to dismantle parts and reuse them as should be) have had to close down.
Do you think the government cares about the environment if it is helping its core earning loads of money in ways like this? I for one used to salvage some parts from an old car to my car (as it’s 40 years old and rare) and now my hobby has been drawn to a halt.
I think this fact should be made public. This is a racket.
Call consumer department, you’re entitled to the scrap metal value of your car.
That’s the incentive anyway.
As for parts, trust them to destroy anything which caters for salvaging and restoration. Slavagg kienu u slavagg jibqghu.
You should see them at auctions, cash laden, throwing silly money at anything to be there with the sinjuri. Easy to manipulate actually, just play toff, be seen particularly interested in the rubbish and they’ll fall for it.
Joe Mizzi is by far the worst performing minister in Joey’s cabinet and should have been dumped in the reshuffle. The reason he wasn’t is that it would have meant that Joey would have had to admit failure in tackling the one of the issues Labour shouted so much about in the campaign, public transport.
He’s a performing monkey in this circus of a government ; terremaxka jonqsu
My guess is that the purchaser will claim they are to be scrapped to get the discount but claim we do not have the facilities to do this here. The buses will then be sent abroad and soon we will hear that they have reappeared on the roads of the country to which they have been sent where no doubt bendy buses are in use every day and in the process engineering a good profit and a return commission for some billboard boy.
Nothing in Arriva saga will surprise me at this stage as the whole thing was fixed prior to the elections, including probably this last swipe at honesty.
Joe Mizzi is proving to be more inept than Manwel Mallia and that is saying something.
That’s a distinguished achievement, my friend.
What a waste! And to think that this government came to power with the support of many so-called environmentalists and environmental NGOs.
I always throught that the bendy buses issue was blown way out of proportion (as was Arriva in general). Surely they can still be used on routes where demand is high and which avoid town centres eg. Valletta to Rabat; St. Julian’s to Bugibba; Airport to Valletta etc etc.
Of course it would be very convenient to scrap the bendy buses in a very profitable way.
phase 1 cut the front part of the bendy bus in half
phase 2 cut the back part of the bendy bus in half
phase 3 weld the 1st half of the front part with the 2nd half of the back part and bingo 1bus with euro 5 engine for new registration at the cost of around Euro 6000
phase 4 sell the remaining parts for scrap and live happily ever after
The Malta Labour Party: A LIBA BA and the 40 thieves.
The biggest waste is the removal of the bendy buses for no valid reason. If used well, bendy buses would increase usage because of greater comfort for passengers, thus reducing traffic on roads. The cost of operation per passenger trip was lower.
With their removal, there will be higher fares, higher subsidies, more traffic congestion and more pollution. Grazzi Joe Mizzi.
Why Tony Bezzina isn’t calling for Joe Mizzi’s resignation is beyond me.
Austin Gatt was given 3 months before his resignation was called for and if one really wants to be honest apart from some route problems the new buses were a vast improvement on the older ones.
Now this idiot has been playing with the issue for over 5 months and all he has achieved so far is.
A dud sale which went horribly wrong.
A payment for the dud sale of over 200,000 euros to the buyer
A farce of a tender where only two companies tendered (omitting the one who only tendered for Gozo)
And payment to the new company of 43,000,000 euros per annum instead of the 10,000,000 euros paid to Arriva.
This means a tax money wastage of 33,000,000 euros per annum by who is probably the loudest but most incompetent Minister of the lot.
You found the right term to describe Joe Mizzi’s incompetence. He’s only good for making qassati.
Thosebuses are to this day parked in a field (surrounded by high walls with a gate) on Tal-Balal Road near San Gwann.
I think the field is owned by Kwik Mix Ltd and anybody passing through Tal-Balal (from Naxxar to San Gwann) can see them. Left like that, the buses will soon become useless.
I don’t know much about the buyer but it is looking to me like the buyer got himself into trouble because he cannot honour the commitment to export the buses and the government (or Joe Mizzi) will be giving him an easy way out at our expense.
If the government wanted to do the right thing it would take this golden opportunity to seize back the buses from the buyer (perhaps also with a fair partial refund) and reinstate them into service ASAP, in the process ridding us of the smokey and uncomfortable buses we now have to contend with in their stead.
I would sue. Mizzi cannot ignore offers which might be better at this stage.
Does anyone believe these will be scrapped?
No.
Instead of calling them stupid I would call them corrupt.
The government should keep those bendy buses. It might find them quite useful and flexible for its U turns.
“Qassata ohra ” ; a very loose translation would be ” another cock-up “